Attracting Gay Male Fertility Patients

Connecting with your target demographic is vital to running a successful business. However, in your target audience there are many subsets that each have their unique needs. One of those subsets is the LGBTQ community. The best way to get to know your customer is to talk with them, and to help you better understand the best way to serve this audience I sat down with Ron Poole-Dayan.

Ron is a marketing and business strategy expert. He is the executive director and founder of Men Having Babies. Along with Greg, his husband of 25 years, they are among the first same-sex couples in the nation to father children through gestational surrogacy. Their twins, born in 2001, were conceived with the use of eggs donated by Greg's sister, and carried by a gestational carrier.

Tune into this episode to hear us talk about: 

• How to market to the LGBTQ community

• Men Having Babies Conferences 

• How to make the LGBTQ community feel welcome 

• Why gay couples may consider fertility clinics vs surrogacy agencies

Resources:
GPAP (Gay Parenting Assistance Program): https://menhavingbabies.org/assistance/criteria/

More from Ron Poole-Dayan: 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ron-poole-dayan-9bb76/

Twitter: @MenHavingBabies

Facebook: https://fb.com/MenHavingBabies

Website URL: https://MenHavingBabies.org

To learn more about our Goal and Competitive Diagnostic, visit us at FertilityBridge.com.

Transcript

Ron Poole-Dayan: [00:00:00] 

You're not just putting a rainbow flag on you or side, but also. For a lot of us it's it is a, as I said, the act itself, the experience itself is something that they want to be positive, you know, for, I don't think that a lot of infertility patients think of this to be something that they want to put in a picture album later and go over. But we do

Narrator: [00:00:23] Welcome to inside reproductive health. The shop talk of the fertility field here, you'll hear authentic and unscripted conversations about practice management, patient relations, and business development from the most forward-thinking experts in our field wall street and Silicon Valley both want your patients, but there is a plan.

If you're willing to take action, visit fertility bridge.com to learn about the first piece of building a fertility marketing system, the goal and competitive diagnostic. Now here's the founder of fertility bridge and the host of Inside Reproductive Health, Griffin Jones .

Griffin Jones: [00:01:02] In today's episode  I talked to Ron Poole-Dayan, he's the founder of Men Having Babies.

You may have heard of that organization. They have events all over the world for prospective same-sex fathers. Many clinics, many agencies, many or groups want to compete for same-sex males in particular, as well as LGBTQ plus patients at large. So we talk about some strategies for that. Ron is a marketing and business strategy professional.

He founded men having babies. Out of a need that after he and his husband, Greg were among the first same-sex couples in the nation to father kids through surrogacy they're twins are more than 20 years old today are almost they conceive them with donated eggs from a relative, and they were carried by gestational carrier.

And Ron saw a need in the marketplace. That's a need that many people are competing for. Nowadays. So we talk about that as well as not just marketing strategies, but the buy-in required at the level of the principle to actually court this patient demographic and not just post a rainbow flag on one's website.

So I hope you enjoy today's episode with Ron Poole-Dayan.  Mr. Poole, Diane, Ron welcomed Inside Reproductive Health. 

Ron Poole-Dayan: [00:02:26] Thank you. Thank you very much for having me. 

Griffin Jones: [00:02:28] So one of the reasons why I wanted to have you on is because the LGBTQ+ patient demographic is really more than just one patient demographic.

It's really an amalgam of different patient demographics. It's also a segment that many want to pursue, but some may not be equipped to. You run an organization called men having babies. And I want to, in, in hearing about what that organization does, what others looking to serve, the LGBTQ plus community can serve particularly gay men can do.

But in getting there, why don't we start with why the organization, even before the, what. Let's start with the why of what need was it that you saw that led you to forming? Men having babies in the first place. 

Ron Poole-Dayan: [00:03:20] And I thank you for this question because really Men Having Babies wasn't didn't evolve or wasn't created out of some sort of brainstorming, what can I do or what can we do?

But rather, to fill a void, it was literally. Me noticing as when my husband and I more than 20 years ago were thinking of creating a family through surrogacy. And our twins from surrogacy are now 20 years old. But when we started our journey, there were very few resources out there.

And that the LGBT center in New York in particular, they were. Support groups to people wanted to pursue adoption co-parenting and even biological parenthood. But the biological parenthood support group was for lesbians who wanted to have a family through IUI. And there was just very few people who were Interested or surrogacy was not really that of course, widely practiced.

So a few years later after I stayed home with the kids for several years, I decided to volunteer at the center and create a group for people who were interested in surrogacy. And here is really the issue. The issue is that. This is about surrogacy more than it's about gay men. So far that it's a self-selection within the LGBT community lesbians are even less likely than the general population to need surrogacy.

Because even if they're suffering from infertility at the same rate as the general population, they have. Tools to start with and gay men can never just do IUI without, at the very least traditional surrogacy. So, so it was a very clear distinction. If you're interested in surrogacy, you're, you know, you're gay.

If you're just an IUI or lesbians, we're interested IUI, so that was the void that we stepped into. In the first place. And then after running this group of which to which people thought there's not going to be any demand, but you know, it grew and grew or started 2005. There wasn't going to be any demand.

Yeah, I would. When I came to the Terry bogus at the time they had of center kids, now it's called center families at the LGBT center in New York. She says, sure, we can. Split the biological parenting group into two, one for a surrogacy, one for IUI, but I don't think you're gonna have enough people.

And of course it was very successful from day one and grew gradually. And then in 2000 leading to 2012, when we incorporated as a not-for-profit we were thinking that we wanted to tackle the issue of the, not just the high costs and of course they were not quite as high as they are even today.

But also the fact that there was no financial assistance. Available for people like us. And that's the second void we moved into. And at that point we needed to incorporate for that purpose as a separate organization. And that is that I literally found a dozen financial assistance our organizations or initiatives out there for people who might among other things need surrogacy, but they were all organized for the purpose of people that were defined as infertile and the medical definition.

Fertility always excluded us. So we didn't create an organization to exclude everybody else. We just created an organization that would fill the void since we were excluded from the other sources for information and for financial assistance. So that's the void we moved into. 

Griffin Jones: [00:06:39] So you moved into this void partly for partly because of the community that was very different from the other half, just going into IUI, for example.

And secondly, for the financial part of it, because other organizations exist to help with financial. Assistance for those that are medically infertile that didn't include gay men. And so you formed this organization and then how did it start to become the event-centric, community centric tribe, almost that it is today.

I don't know if you use that word, but just looking from afar. Kind of how I perceive it. 

Ron Poole-Dayan: [00:07:20] It's definitely a community. And but it, of course didn't start as such. And it's interesting because I always tell people that while our visible part, to many people, of course, he's the silo of the organization that is organizing events.

Although that's, you know, a funny thing happens, you know, the last year, as far as events are concerned. But of course in a normal year until, COVID but people of course know us for is the very large events. And if you're listening to this and you're not familiar , in  normal year we would have towards, you know, until COVID started in the last few years.

Yeah. We'd have about eight conferences a year round and these conferences have been often also described lovingly as a bootcamp because they're not a scientific conference and not a professional conference. There it's a weekend where people literally don't. Ever get to look even at their phones and they're just immersed and taken step-by-step through the process that would allow them to determine whether surrogacies for them are events.

Our organization is not advocating for surrogacy. It's advocating for ethical surrogacy, but it's not saying you should do surrogacy. It's not saying you should become a parent, but if you thinking of becoming a parent and you're It requires surrogacy and our events are not just exclusively for gay men.

Then this is a good opportunity to find out whether the service is for you and whether, and how to pursue it, whether you can afford it and how, and everything you need to know from a, you know, the medical issues to budgeting, you know, and other financial aspects of it. And ethicals psychosocial issues.

Insurance, you name it.  e have sessions for prospective, single parents people HIV issue B plus, et cetera, but those bootcamps, so to speak happen in different parts of the world. We have four. Really large events for usually about 300  plus intended parents in New York, San Francisco, Brussels, and type pay for the, for the Asian region.

And we have also events sometimes the ultimate in Chicago. Televiv Florida. Texas sometimes Canada we've had their various events. So that's, that takes of course a lot of the energy and a lot of the you know, That's a major part. Of course, if our budget, et cetera. However, the other silo GPAP, they gave parenting assistance program is almost the reason for everything else.

Of course, at least, you know, very synergetic, but it also takes a lot of our resources. We have three people working on it and between applications and case management at any point in time, we have several dozen Mostly couples, but also singles who were getting full assistance from us, which means that they're getting not just some cash, but also pro bono services facilitated by now more than a hundred providers, including many of the leading clinics and agencies in the field.

And we basically. Super case managed their journeys. They still have case managers. They deceased and take them all the way until they become parents. Even if they need additional contingency funds as we call them, et cetera. So, so it's a lot of work and to some extent it's as big of a area of activity we have.

And we also do advocacy.

Griffin Jones: [00:10:38] I want to talk about, I want to learn more about that advocacy, but I also want to learn about the strategic partners. You mentioned the providers and agencies that you work with. At what point did that start and what did those strategic partnerships form into? 

Ron Poole-Dayan: [00:10:54] It has been  an evolution and the nice thing that it's been an evolution, but it's also been a partnership.

So I always. You know, start with a disclaimer, especially at our events to explain to the prospective parents that we're not partnering with agencies and clinics in the sense that we are here to help them do business. We create the platform that allows them to reach out to the community and we created a platform that allows them to even give back to the community, 

Griffin Jones: [00:11:23] Isn't that helping them do business?

Ron Poole-Dayan: [00:11:25] So, as I said, we created a platform. That allows them to reach out to the community and that of course allows them to do business with the community. And we also created a platform that allows them to give back to the community which is the GPAP and the membership benefit I'll mention in a minute, but so the evolution of that idea started with the fact that even before we were an organization in order to provide the full spectrum of guidance and information that people needed at the LGBT center still we had of course, people from the professional community who came to speak.

And then we say, you know, why don't we let them have a little table for their clinic or agency, et cetera. And then much later they, after the LBG LGBT center say, why don't we have them pay, you know, for these tables. And when we created the organization, we when we incorporated the business model was supposedly.

A little bit, Robin Hoodish. She said, Oh, we can charge a lot more than $350 for those tables that the LGBT center was charging. Let's charge them more and we'll give this money tto people can't afford it.So it was just, the first idea was just literally, let's just. We didn't even think of salaries or overhead or anything.

I was, of course I've volunteered as the only employee of the organization in the beginning years. We said, okay, let's just charge money and give that to people. But then as much as we would have charged, even if we charge as much as we do today, because of course now it's been established it's much larger and we can charge higher sponsorship fees.

It wouldn't have gone that far. And it was. Somebody from the industry told me, how about you also get pro bono services? And that was, you know, you know, when the light bulb went on and I said, yeah, we need the assistance we need has to be something we do. In partnership with the professor community.

And the first step we did was to create a questionnaire after some research where we sent to all the providers, we already knew and asked them, what do they think the income threshold should be? What do they think that we should give assistance also to people that have kids or just people that don't have kids yet?

Do they think that they should be other countries and what, so we. Got their input about a lot of the building blocks that went into creating our gay parenting assistance program. And God helped me. We got a lot of their comments when he was time to write the contracts. So it was about a year and a half when those, because half of them are lawyers as you know.

And so thankfully, so it started as in that regard, it started as a partnership and because a lot of them told me and I totally believed them. They said, We want to help, you know, we do see those people can't afford it and we feel bad about it. It's just, it wasn't up to any one of them to create an assistance program.

A lot of them said, I'm going to start the program to help people can't afford it. They couldn't do it on their own. So it was our service, so to speak to the professional community, but saying we'll create the platform, we'll create the infrastructure that allows you to do what you are stating as something that you feel, you know, dearly about as well.

Griffin Jones: [00:14:32] They couldn't do it because of the resources and bandwidth required. 

Ron Poole-Dayan: [00:14:36] Yeah. It's just a simple, you know, organizational issue you want. You don't need, you know, 200 assistance programs, you know, we have, you know, you need one. And if somebody had to step up and create it and we did that, as I said, a lot of them see it as a service we provided because they really more than we wanted them to provide support and channel it through us.

They were looking for a way to. To bring that to bear. So, so that's really how th part of the evolution of that a member of that partnership was, and I'm saying another important part and of course, I mean, so we have several concentric circles here. If you may, we have more than a hundred providers.

Now we just passed the threshold a month or so ago that are giving through the gay parenting assistance program and a program that came later. Now we called the membership benefit program, which is a discount program just that is wider. It's for anybody that's a member, a supporting member of  MHB.

But then we have, of course, a providers who come just to our conferences, I would say two thirds of the providers who come to conferences are also part of GPAP a nd the membership benefit program, but not all of them. All of them have to abide by the baseline protocols that are part of our ethical framework.

Something that we also developed first and foremost with input from surrogates, but also from inputs input from the professional community. So that's another layer of partnership here. And I would say not important layer of partnership or formalizing that in a more structured way was I think about five or six years ago when we created our advisory board.

And we now have an advisory board that have several physicians on it. Some agency owners, and also people from related fields. And that is an amazing when created, we weren't even sure how successful it's going to be, but now those are approximately monthly meetings and a lot of input we've received from.

Where to do our next conference to, you know, definitely ethical issues as well as various other initiatives that we needed that kind of additional perspective for. 

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Have them sign up for the goal and competitive diagnostic. And I will see you and your partners on zoom.

So With regard to those different levels of partnership and involvement, all the way from being a sponsor at an event at a booth to being on the advisory board, I want to talk a little bit about the role of clinics and how you interface with them and what the best among them do to serve not just the LGBT plus community, but specifically gay men.

There's a lot of executives that listened to the show on the industry side there's pharmacy o wners. There's there's definitely agency owners, but most of the people that listen to the show are practice owners or REI's. And so. You'd probably have a range of involvement from those clinics. You mentioned some people sitting on the advisory board, but what do the best do to get involved in the community?

Because it's one thing to sponsor something at an event. And then there's another thing to like actually be a participant. And I wonder if you can talk about that range. 

Ron Poole-Dayan: [00:19:26] If you may, I want to take a little you know, a side trip here to explain, I think what some practice owners and people in the especially in the medical field that are dealing with surrogacy and gay men.

Might not always realize or articulate for many it's what I'm going to say would be would sound trivial, but it's really important to answer your question. And that is a significant, you know, you know, very principle difference between Our community and the infertility medical infertility community, both of which a lot of the medical professionals serve at once.

And that is that we of course get to this very differently. The in fertile, medically infertile committee individuals, you can't even call them a community. They get to it as. Isolated individuals who've been escalating up, you know, the medical treatment you know, a ladder to the point that they also need somebody to help them carry the baby.

And it's already after a lot of treatments, typically, sometimes of course you have women that just know they don't have a womb. They have they'll need to have a surrogate, but one way that they've comes out of a, you know, of a. Medical condition and a sense of, you know, you need the healing, you need, you know, assistance medical assistance.

They don't think. That the first thing they need to go to do is to go to a very large hotel with a few hundred other people and start chatting about it and go to the, you know, welcome reception and do this and do that a happy hour. That's not what comes to mind and that's not also the right way to bring, because we always say our conferences are open also for intersexual in front of people and they don't come to conferences.

Maybe we will have, I don't know. 5-10% of that. And these are going to be it's better by the way, with virtual events, but you know, it's just not the same thing we feel when by the time. Gay men come to our events or become parent become members at our organization or reach, you know, access our online resources.

It's an act of empowerment. It's an act of, I'm going to take my faith in my own hands and I see a solution. I see, you know, a light at the end of this. It's not even a tunnel. It's a life affirming life changing event. And It is a very different mindset for doctors to have an initial consultation with patients that are like that.

It's a bit very different you know, Introduction and a completely different set of needs. So there are some practices who are very focused on this for whom this would obviously sound trivial by the time those practices are focusing and opening up and knowing how to address the needs of this community.

They also need to be opening up to much larger. Basin of patients. It's not going to be just your geographical area, where people are going to be sent by their OB GYN or smaller fertility clinics. It's going to be people from all over. It's going to be people who are gonna come from overseas. It's going to be people who don't always, you know English is not their first language.

Always. It's going to be people who are going to need to think about it in much more careful ways financially. So the financial consultation. There are people that are not eligible for insurance, even in the 13 or whatever States where there is IVF mandate. 

Griffin Jones: [00:22:48] It seems that there's like 20 doctors or so that are getting 80% of the gay male cases. Is that really the case? 

Ron Poole-Dayan: [00:22:56] If you're talking about practices, not individual doctors, I would say probably closer to 30 or 40 that are getting the 80%, but probably all of them, they're probably even, you know, 20 that are even more active. Our view might be biased just because, you know, people who come to our, you know, events to part of our program tend to come back.

So it means it's working for them. So we tend to see the same ones again and again, then must be probably out there. Some that I would say those are probably Well, I was going to say price much higher, but the price differences in the clinic side, and not as big as the price differences, the spectrum of costs is much broader on the agency side than it is on the clinic side.

Griffin Jones: [00:23:35] That's interesting. That's an interesting point. I want to explore for that a little bit, but with the distribution, the uneven distribution of gay male patients going to see certain clinics, and you mentioned it's a very different journey from those dealing with infertility is a medical diagnosis.

 For that reason, many gay male couples do go the agency route first many clinics would love to disrupt that they would love for them to come to the clinic first. And so they have a bit more control of the funnel of those patients coming through. It seems to be very. Uneven. And so what are those clinics?

You know, if it is 30 or if it is 40 that are getting that 80, 90% of the game outpatients in the nation, what are they doing differently? 

Ron Poole-Dayan: [00:24:24] First of all, I would say that from the population that comes through our organization, I don't think it is that universal. In fact, I wouldn't even, I wouldn't even bet that it's half of them that are first going to the agency.

It used to be that way. The people that are going to the agency first are. Typically the people that are not fully informed that did not get the full training and advice that they get from our resources and our conferences. And in turn, they depend on the agencies to educate them. So, because that would be, you know, perhaps the assumption of a lot of people, but by the way, not European so much, but a lot of Americans probably would say, I need to look for surrogacy agency.

And if they didn't come to an educational event, they would think that's where they should get their information. And that's the first step people come to our events. I know by now that fresh cycles, fresh transfers are. By far not the norm anymore. In fact, that many times they're not even recommended in the case of surrogacy and that they would know that it many times makes a lot of sense to create embryos and bank them while they're shopping around even saving more money.

And can afford also the surrogate and the surrogacy agency. So I would say a lot of people nowadays understand that this there's a decoupling there.  They don't have to first go to the agency, make sure that the surrogates ready and only then start the medical procedure that is, you know, at least 10 years old assumption.

But But yeah, I mean, people if you know, some doctors out there practices out there at wondering, you know, what needs to happen for them to be you know, catering more to this population, as I said, they need to be a lot more. I mean, I hate to use the word, but there's a lot more marketing involved here.

And a lot of doctors don't like marketing. They don't like the concept of marketing. And the marketing here is doesn't have to be like, you know, mechanical commercial type of marketing, but you need to have. People in your practice who are, you know, responsible to reach out to the community and know how to do it.

It's not enough even to just have a booth at a conference, you need to be able to know how to have a good list of your alumni. And. Maybe have a group of your alumni be your spokespeople, or, you know, spread the word that you're coming to Brussels next month. And, you know, Dr. X is going to be the doctor to help me.

He's going to be in town and maybe doing a little alumni event and post on social media about it, things that I think. A lot of the practices are more infertility focused, I'm not even equipped or geared, or they're not, you know, I'm not wavelength, you know what I'm saying? 

Griffin Jones: [00:27:13] The doctor have to do all of that marketing or can they put a rainbow flag on their website and have a physician liaison makeup pamphlet and distributed. 

Ron Poole-Dayan: [00:27:23] The doctor needs to be passionate about it. And that's another thing you can't fake it. You, first of all, a lot of doctors just like it more. I don't know why, but I mean, this is To some extent, as I mentioned you, you're not dealing with infertility loss with, you know, miscarriages and it's you just, you know, you have happy people coming to you.

You provide them, you know, most of the times it's, as you know, it works on the first try. Everybody's happy. So some people just like it better even A lot of doctors describe it as, you know, fertility treatments to do very infertile because you're working with a very fertile egg donor with a, you know, very fertile, a very suitable surrogate.

So it's to some extent, I'm sure that medically it's perhaps more gratifying, but you have to be passionate about third party reproduction. And you have to be passionate about the LGBT community. And people will know that you don't have to be gay. You don't have to be part of the community, but you have to have an understanding too, because I meant I might've colored it too, you know, brightly, you know, it's not as if we don't come from hardships, it's not as if we don't come with further hardships waiting down the road for us. But but you have to be you have to understand this. And as I mentioned, You have to be doing some things that you wouldn't otherwise do because some things that would look tasteless for the infertility crowd would be necessary here.

As I mentioned, events, you know, parties or something or, you know, newsletters, things that might not always work or are necessary when you work with the infertility segment. 

Griffin Jones: [00:28:59] Why is that necessary for courting gay men as patients. 

Ron Poole-Dayan: [00:29:04] First of all, it's not necessary. Of course there's always going to be somebody and we still have some people that say, you know, I live in Iowa. I need to find an Iowa clinic and. That's not true. There are some proximity considerations that we go over them when we do our training, but a lot of it is the geographical considerations are very different here, but the reason to go back to your question, the reason it needs to be done differently is that.

Our community is very sensitive to cues to know whether they will feel comfortable in your clinic. And so the first thing they're looking for is they don't want to be the only gay clients you have. They don't want to be the only gay clients you ever had. They, you know, so that's a very, so, which is why by the way, being part of our gay Parenthood assistance program is a very.

Real way for them to see that you're committed. You're not just putting a rainbow flag on you or side, but also. For a lot of us it's it is a, as I said, the act itself, the experience itself is something that they want to be positive, you know, for, I don't think that a lot of infertility patients think of this to be something that they want to put in a picture album later and go over.

But we do for us you know the first picture of I'm getting goosebumps. The first picture in our kids' album photo album is there as embryos. You know, and it's something we celebrate, it's something, you know, you know, we like chatting with people with the front desk, people at the clinic and it's all done is something that is more communal, more social, more open. We post on social media, you know, some people post on social media too much, you know, but they post every step of the way. It is, I think, I don't think that's the experience of the typical infertility patients. 

Griffin Jones: [00:30:57] I think that's at least in part that's right in terms of the involvement that docs need to have.

Some sort of authentic connection. I sometimes get prospects. I can think of a couple in particular prospects, not clients that reached out and their clinics and they want to increase their same-sex. Patients, and they don't have any desire or inclination to actually invest in the resource. And so essentially in providing the resources to actually make that initiative happen.

And it's essentially saying, I just want more money. I just want more. Of that patient base. I'm not going to do anything to give them a reason to come to me. And it sounds like what you're seeing from those that have been really successful because there's definitely, if not a predo distribution than not an even distribution, that they are doing a really good job of making that authentic connection.

Exactly. How would they do that through an organization like yours? Because I think there are some people that we interact with either clients of ours or. People we've done consulting with and they want to increase same-sex patients. And one of the pieces of advice that we give them strategy is getting involved with organizations like yours.

So how, if they came to you and said, listen, Ron, I'm, I've never really made an effort for this patient demographic before, but I'd like to, how would you get them started? 

Ron Poole-Dayan: [00:32:35] So, in fact, I don't think there's a better way if I may say so myself to do this than to get involved with Men Having Babies, I would say first come to one of our events, you know, attend one and unless of course it's very urgent, then they want to start yesterday.

But I would say come and attend one and you'll get a good education. I mean, people who I mean, some of our conferences arguably The providers, the exhibitors themselves can sit in the plenary session because. We're limited in space, but if you come, you can come, always is what we call it professional attendees so you can buy a ticket.

It's more expensive, but you can buy a ticket to it's a lot less expensive than sponsorship and just attend one of those. It'd be a great education for you. But  more, you know, practically of course being at our events provide you a lot of exposure, but I would say before you come to our events, have a section on your website for I mean, not just with the rainbow flag, but for LGBT people and more importantly about surrogacy. Of course, if you're not, if you're not doing a lot of third party to begin with, and then of course you're not even a good match regardless of what you do. So you need to know what surrogacy is and you need to have a section on your website of surrogacy with mention of same-sex couples or just about same sex couples separately. Of course people will take a look at that, you know, the very first time they go, if you don't mention surrogacy, why would they even come to you? And if you do, you should specifically make them feel welcome beware that most people use the same. Stock images of gay couples with a kid trying to be, you know, of course us, we never used stock images at all, but you know, really if you have alumni and they willing to use their photos, that's the best thing to do.

Maybe have an event like a pride event or pride party at your clinic and invite some people with their babies. Take some photos. You'd be surprised how much people would love them and would tag them themselves in it. The privacy issue is very different when it comes to gay couples. Of course they might not want their kids social security number posted on social media, but they're going to be very happy to be part of your, to, to really, you know, show how thankful they are by doing that.

So, And then if you have that you don't have to have special pricing. You don't have to have you, you know, I don't know. You might have, you  know, something different in the clinic. I mean, it used to be that you needed to have something else in the sperm donation room, but you know, everybody has a cell phone that is a smartphone now, so that's no longer a problem.

So you don't need to do anything. In the clinic, but you do need to think about the financial intake you know, consultation it is different. You don't want to, you know, throw at them some financial, you know, pamphlets that are not suitable on the one hand. On the other hand, you don't want to, you know, because one of the things I remember.

You know, almost as a trauma is that, you know, the financial person at the Brigham and women hospital where we had our children created, was basically telling me how much you know, disadvantage compared to the people who have insurance pay paying for their IVF. You know, that's not the kind of discussion you want to have with them.

Griffin Jones: [00:35:43] 

Maybe a little training for the, that might be something? 

Ron Poole-Dayan: [00:35:46] I mean, luckily nowadays, You probably not as likely to have a bigoted people on your staff, but you need to have buy-in from the staff and you don't want anybody to give anybody a cold shoulder, but I would say really just two things giving to the, you know, reaching out to the community's own.

Institutions on the one hand, on the other hand, reaching out to your alumni and those are the two major, you know, ways to get to the to this community. You must have, of course, if you're thinking about you, must've had at least one or two couples, maybe more that you already help reach out to them, you know?

Maybe one of them say I'm going to come with you to the booth, you know, that's usually helpful. 

Griffin Jones: [00:36:35] And featuring them in testimonials  is really important too, to make sure that, you know, when everyone needs to have video testimonials and some can be done, some can be done fairly cheaply. If you want good ones and have more of a story, then you spend more and invest more in video.

But if this patient demographic is important to you, you have to have, you have to include them in the testimonials that you're doing. 

Ron Poole-Dayan: [00:37:01] And you might want to get an Instagram account, or you might, you know, and not all clinics even have that, you know? And and you'd be surprised how many people would check you out through social media and wanna to see who, who likes you and stuff like that.

So some of you who take time, I'm not saying it's a. The other thing I would also advise against is. Well, first of all, I would suggest have a conversation with us. We always have compensation and even training with providers who are participating for the first time. We literally give them a lot of tips, you know, from.

Don't stand behind the table all the time, come in front of the table, engage with people and things like that. A lot of tips, even about virtual events. But and as I mentioned before, try to reach out to the alumni community group, et cetera. But I would say the other word of caution, I would say yes, commas in that 10 D if you want to just learn more, but don't come at a sub optimal participation level.

That's not just not effective. It might be counter productive. What am I saying? We have various levels of, you know, representation at a conference and the clinic can not be a bronze sponsor. They just can't. Those are the lawyers. Those are the escrow services. And you don't get a breakout session.

You don't get counseling. You're not part of the consultation system alot of other  things. We do our. Bootcamps are, you know, weekend long immersion surrogacy events have evolved with a lot of feedback from attendees. From providers. We have a whole system in place that allows people. We have different experience for the research people who are always, you know, five, six, Sometimes 10% of the attendees.

Then we have the people who are one to two years from a journey. We have the people that are six months from the journey. We have the people that are actively in the journey. So we have different experience for them all. And we have, so, you know, the people that are ready, they actually have consultations that signed contracts at the conference, the people who are, you know, just doing research, they're not going to do that, but they're going to benefit from other aspects of it.

If you're coming and you're not. Listening to what would be a good level of engagement here to you? You might be sending the wrong signal, not let alone, not getting the full value of your participation and always consider if you're not willing to give at least discounts to people with financial needs, you might be also sending the wrong message.

Griffin Jones: [00:39:32] So how does this all tie into advocacy and how can providers agencies join in the advocacy that you all are a part of? And to what extent should they? 

Ron Poole-Dayan: [00:39:46] We very much involve and receive a lot of engagement from the professional community in our advocacy efforts. First and foremost started with what we call the framework for ethical surrogacy practices.

Frankly it started at the days when a lot of people would still going to India, then the piled and Thailand and Mexico and other destinations. And we just needed to codify. What our, what we call now, baseline protocols that were our thresholds conditions for including programs at our conferences.

And And what we did is we partnered, as I mentioned, with a group of surrogates who are until today, not necessarily the same individuals, we have a surrogate advisory committee. And we had got a lot of input, as I mentioned, also from the professional community and. Something, I should've mentioned before.

We're not a local organization anywhere, everywhere we go. We have partnerships with local LGBT family associations. So we have dozens of LGBT family associations that are partnering with us and especially play a role in each one of the locations where we arrive for an annual conference and also liaise with us with regards to the financial assistance program and other things throughout the years throughout, throughout the year.

So, We had input from LGBT associations, from the professional community, from the surrogates. And we created a framework that includes principles, which guide us through legislation initiatives. We have what we call the basic protocols. I mentioned before that those are the. Minimum conditions for providers to be part of our program and they need to sign off on them.

And then we have best practices that go beyond that. So that was the initial round of advocacy. It led us, of course, also to be very involved in the legislation efforts, mostly the one in New York, where we were very closely associated with the effort and. You know, the entire part in our section on compensation of the New York bill has been written without input and reflects a lot of our values and our principles.

More recently, we focusing we created something, we call the advocacy and research forum because we realized that to some extent where the traveling circus. So, first of all, we are also terrific place for the, you know, for the professional community to just socialize. I mean, wherever we go, we have about 150 to sometimes 200 of, you know, people from the clinics, from the agencies, from the law firms, from the complementary services that are coming there.

Some of them come as that. And these, most of them are exhibitors. So we said, we have this amazing group of people there with us that don't have a single other, you know, a forum where they. Join us, such ASRM is not quite this and sees is not quite this ABA, Arthur, none of those are where all the people interested in surrogacy come together.

And then we also have partnership with research researchers and research institutions. So we said there's a lot of things happening with regards to advocacy and research. So first let's have this. Forum where we have in all of our, or at least most of our events such that we can share what's happening in the other locations, such that everybody can hear about the latest research, et cetera.

So that's one aspect of it. But then in every location, that was a little different aspect of of advocacy. They wanted to discuss, you know, San Francisco, they wanted to discuss advocacy, you know, surrogacy in the lens of social justice in Taiwan. It was mostly still from the LGBT acceptance prison.

New York one session was a force just making the case how you can do. Ethical surrogacy legally without really taking advantage of everybody, et cetera. And. Most recently, our focus is on trying to coordinate advocacy in several parallel tracks with the aim of eventually making surrogacy a lot more affordable, because the reality is that surrogacy is still out of reach financially to most people.

So almost as we. Finished the round of legal advances. Now that surrogacy is illegal almost in all the States in the United States. And first and foremost the glaring mission of New York was rectified. Now we have to realize that's not enough, it's still not accessible financially, and we need to do something about it.

So, it's starting with how alongside, with resolve, we're advocating for a redefinition of infertility to include not just disease and conditions, but also a status. And this is actually now being advanced in California is a bill that could open up IVF if they, you know, even Institute that IVF benefits, not just for heterosexual and infertile people, but also for gay people.

But also look at insurance issues. Look at benefits at the workplace. Look at. Possible initiative in now with the more favorable administration, perhaps changing taxation right now heterosexual and gay people cannot write off any surrogacy related expenses. So all these things together alongside with interest free loans, which is an initiative we have, and we can partner with clinics by the way, who want to provide interest free loans.

We can explain to them how we can do that through us. All these things together in a concentrated effort to chip away from the various cost aspects of it. And to go beyond our financial assistance program that still only reaches several hundred couples and singles a year and not more.  

Griffin Jones: [00:45:26] Ron, you've talked a lot about advocacy, about what clinics can do to better court gay male couples, about what they can better do to serve them.

How would you like to conclude and our audience isn't just practice owners. It is also agency owners and other folks from the field, whether it's in advocacy or service, how would you want or getting involved with men, having babies? How would you want to conclude. 

Ron Poole-Dayan: [00:45:50] So first of all, come to our website and sign up to be on our professional mailing list.

We have advocacy events that are, should be probably very interesting to a lot of people listening. One of them is about surrogates, stigma and stereotypes. That's coming up, May 14th as part of our MHB West virtual conference but also in New York where we are resuming our in-person conferences in September.

We're going to have conferences in New York, then Chicago, Brussels, and Tel Aviv. One each month September, October, November, and December the advocacy forum there. And maybe that could be some conclusion to our conversation is going to be about the intensifying commercial. Atmosphere in these field and how we feel that's not that, you know, welcome.

And there are bidding Wars on surrogates. There are mergers and acquisitions and a lot of equity marketplaces bounties referral fees, a lot of things that are happening that I think. A lot of us are being drawn into and maybe we can stop and say, do we really need all of those things? And what can we do to.

Stay connected to what is common to all of us in the nonprofit sector. And I know in this particular field, that what makes it so unique is that the professionals in this field are also feeling that they have a mission. They're very mission driven. How can we all get together and make sure that we're still mission-focused and not, you know, be drawn to thinking about it exclusively as a business.

Griffin Jones: [00:47:29] Ron Poole-Dayan, thank you so much for coming on Inside Reproductive Health. 

Ron Poole-Dayan: [00:47:33] Thank you so much for having me. 

Narrator: [00:47:36] You've been listening to the inside reproductive health podcast with Griffin Jones. If you're ready to take action, to make sure that your practice thrives beyond the revolutionary changes that are happening in our field and in society, visit fertility bridge.com to begin the first piece of the fertility marketing system, the goal and competitive diagnostic.

Thank you for Listening to Inside Reproductive Health.