Start With the Fork in the Road
There are two broad routes, and they lead to quite different sets of questions.
A known or private donor is someone you know or have connected with directly: a friend, an acquaintance, or someone you have met through a donor matching community. This is a common route in South Africa, partly because it is far less expensive.
A clinic or sperm bank donor is someone whose sperm is supplied through a fertility clinic, and frozen. You receive a profile rather than a relationship. The cost is significantly higher, often several thousand Rand per vial before any clinic fees.
Neither is the better option in the abstract. They suit different people. What matters is that you know which set of questions you are working through, because they barely overlap.
If you have not read it yet, our guide on what to do once you have found a donor in SA covers the legal framework in more detail.
The Questions to Ask Yourself First
Before you ask a potential donor anything, it helps to know your own answers. These are the ones that tend to matter most for solo mums.
What role, if any, do you want this person to have? There is a wide range here: no contact at all, occasional updates, being known to your child as the donor, or something closer to an active presence in their life. All of these are legitimate. What causes difficulty is not the answer you choose, but discovering partway through that you and the donor assumed different answers.
What do you want to be able to tell your child? Under South African law, a donor-conceived child can access identifying information about their donor at 18. That is the legal floor, not the ceiling. Some solo mums decide early that they want to be able to give their child more than a name at 18, which shapes the kind of donor they look for.
What happens if your circumstances change? If you move cities or overseas, if you later have a partner, if you want a second child a few years down the line: do these change what you need from the arrangement? A donor who is relaxed about a single child may feel differently about a sibling three years later.
How much involvement can you comfortably manage? Some solo mums find a moderately involved donor gives their child something valuable. Others find any ambiguity in the arrangement exhausting to manage alone. Both are reasonable. Knowing which one you are is useful information.
The Questions to Ask a Known Donor
Once you know your own position, these are the conversations to have. Have them before anything else happens, and have them more than once.
Why do you want to do this? A vague or evasive answer is worth paying attention to. Donors with clear, settled reasons tend to be more reliable over time than those who have not thought it through.
What involvement do you expect? Ask directly and ask for specifics. "I am happy to be hands off" means different things to different people. Does hands off include birthday photos? A meeting at age five? Nothing at all?
Who else knows, and how do they feel? If he has a partner, is she aware and comfortable? If his family finds out later, how is that likely to go? Other people's reactions have a way of reshaping arrangements that seemed settled.
What if you change your mind? Ask what he would want if, in three years, he felt differently. You cannot make this hypothetical binding, but the answer tells you a great deal about how he thinks.
Are there financial expectations? In South Africa, paying someone for a donation is not permitted. Reimbursing reasonable expenses such as travel or screening costs is. Any conversation that drifts toward payment is a signal to step back.
What about a second child? If you might want a sibling, raise that topic now. Some donors are happy to help once and not again. It is better to know before your first child exists than after.
The Screening Questions
These are the practical health questions to work through with any known donor, ideally before you start trying.
Ask him to have recent sexually transmitted infection screening, including HIV, hepatitis B and C, syphilis, chlamydia, and gonorrhoea. Clinics test donors as standard, so this is the gap to close when using a known donor.
Ask about genetic carrier screening. A GP can advise on what is appropriate, and it becomes more relevant if you share ethnic background or if there is a family history worth checking.
Ask about family medical history on both sides, going back at least two generations. Write it down. Your child may want it one day, and memory fades.
A semen analysis is also worth considering, particularly if several cycles pass without a pregnancy. It costs relatively little and rules out a variable you would otherwise spend months wondering about.
The Legal Question That Matters Most for Solo Mums
This is one of the most important aspects of your journey, and it is always worth getting personalised legal advice rather than relying solely on online guides, including this one.
In South Africa, the law is generally very clear that a sperm donor is not considered the legal parent of a donor-conceived child and has no parental rights or responsibilities. Sections 40 and 41 of the Children's Act provide that no legal parent-child relationship exists between a donor and the child unless the donor was married to the mother at the time of conception. Donors who are not registered as the child's father cannot later claim paternity or parental rights.
When a donor-conceived child turns 18, they may request non-identifying medical information about the donor, while the donor's identifying details remain confidential. If you are using a known donor, it is particularly important to have a comprehensive donor agreement in place before conception and to obtain independent legal advice to ensure everyone understands their rights and responsibilities. Of course, you may like to give the donor certain rights, which would form part of your contract with him.
An hour of advice, plus a written donor agreement setting out everyone's intentions, is inexpensive relative to what it protects.
A donor agreement is not a contract that binds a court, but it does record what everyone intended at the outset. If disagreements arise later, that contract matters.
One of our customers, Hana, described the lawyer appointment as the moment the whole thing stopped feeling improvised. Not because anything in her arrangement changed, but because it was finally written down.
The Questions to Ask a Clinic or Sperm Bank
If you go the clinic route, the questions shift toward logistics and long-term availability.
Ask what information comes with the donor profile, and whether it includes anything beyond the basics: a personal statement, medical history depth, childhood photos, recorded interviews.
Ask how many families the donor is permitted to help create, both in South Africa and in the country the sperm is sourced from. Ask whether a sibling registry exists.
Ask whether you can reserve vials for a future sibling, what that costs, and how long they can be stored. This is the single most common regret we hear from solo mums who used a clinic donor: not reserving for a second child while the donor was still available.
Ask for the full cost breakdown, including storage, shipping, and clinic fees, rather than the per vial price alone.
Ask if they can ship the vials directly to you for at-home insemination - some will only send them to your doctor
Trusting Your Own Read
There is no scoring system for this. At some point you will have asked everything reasonable and still be sitting with a decision that is partly instinct.
That is normal, and your instinct is not the least reliable input here. If something feels persistently off with a known donor even though every answer was fine, that is worth listening to. There will be other donors. There is only one of this decision.
Once you have made it, our guides on ovulation tracking and at-home insemination cover what comes next.
Frequently Asked Questions
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Both work, and the right answer depends on your priorities. A known donor is far less expensive and allows your child to have a relationship or at least clear information from the start, but it requires careful legal groundwork and ongoing communication. A clinic donor offers standardised medical screening and a defined, distant arrangement, but costs significantly more per cycle and gives you less flexibility if you later want a sibling.
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Recent sexually transmitted infection screening covering HIV, hepatitis B and C, syphilis, chlamydia, and gonorrhoea. Genetic carrier screening is also worth discussing with your GP, particularly if you share ethnic background or there is relevant family history. Ask for a written family medical history going back at least two generations, and consider a semen analysis if several cycles pass without a pregnancy.
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A written donor agreement is strongly recommended. It does not bind a court, but it records what everyone intended, which matters if views change later. The legal position around parentage and responsibility can be more nuanced for a single woman than for a couple, so it is worth paying for an hour with a family lawyer before you start rather than after.
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No. Payment for donation is not permitted under SA law. Reimbursing reasonable expenses such as travel or screening costs is acceptable. If a conversation moves toward payment for the donation itself, treat that as a reason to step back and seek advice.
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Raise it early, before your first child exists. With a known donor, ask directly whether he would be willing to help again and how he would feel about it in a few years. With a clinic donor, ask whether you can reserve vials for a sibling, what storage costs, and how long they can be held. Not reserving is one of the most common regrets we hear from solo mums who used a clinic.
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When you have covered involvement expectations, motivation, who else knows, financial expectations, future siblings, and medical screening, you have covered the ground that tends to cause problems later. Beyond that, some of the decision is instinct. If something continues to feel wrong even when the answers are fine, that is worth taking seriously.
