Applying for an IVF Grant

In the fall of 2025, the Wyatt Fertility Foundation and the Conceive Fertility Foundation ran a joint grant cycle. By their own announcement, they received more than 450 applications from across the United States. They funded five families.

That is roughly one in ninety. It is also one of the only acceptance rates anyone in this corner of philanthropy publishes at all.

There are dozens of organizations in the US allocating funds to people paying for IVF, IUI, surrogacy, fertility preservation and adoption. Many of them are run by people who went through infertility journeys themselves and decided to do something to help others. Nearly all of them are oversubscribed. And almost none of them publish the numbers that would let you judge whether applying is worth your time and your money.

So we read the fine print instead. We went through the published eligibility rules, fee schedules and application requirements for roughly seventeen fertility grant programs, and a pattern comes into focus: these programs are a genuine lifeline for the families who get them, and the rules governing who can apply look remarkably like the rules governing who can afford treatment in the first place.

Federal regulators writing about fertility benefits this past May put a single IVF cycle at $15,000 to $20,000, and noted that the average number of cycles needed to get pregnant is about 2.5. The same document cites research putting the figure considerably higher, at $24,373 to $38,015 per cycle and $61,377 per successful pregnancy. Either way, most families are looking at a five-figure number.

The American Society for Reproductive Medicine has been blunt about what that does to people. In its ethics committee opinion on disparities in access to infertility treatment, ASRM cites survey data in which 83% of patients were concerned or very concerned about cost, 70% of those who went through IVF went into debt, and nearly 34% reported having to stop treatment because they could not afford it. A single cycle, ASRM notes, may represent half of an average person’s annual disposable income.

Against that, a fertility grant is usually somewhere between $5,000 and $20,000. Real money. Rarely the whole bill. Almost always the difference between one more try and no more tries.

The Brilora Fertility Foundation in Michigan is a good example of how these organizations come to exist. Founded in 2020 by Lauren Clements after her own experience with infertility and the birth of twin daughters through IVF, it was known until recently as Chosen Fertility Group. Its own account of its origins is the line most of these foundations could write: "What began around a kitchen table in Metro Detroit has grown into a lifeline for hundreds of families facing infertility."

Brilora now runs ten grant programs, nine of which opened on September 1 and close on November 1, 2026, with a tenth running year round. The Born Strong IVF Grant is national. Several others are tied to named partner clinics in Michigan and California, and the roster also includes a national surrogacy grant, mental health grants covering psychotherapy in Michigan, California, Texas and Florida, and fertility preservation grants for people facing cancer treatment. Brilora does not publish award amounts on its grants index, though one of its partner clinics, RMA of Michigan, describes the grant it administers as covering up to $20,000. Brilora’s board is chaired by Kelly Stafford. No application fee appears anywhere on the site.

Like nearly every program in this space, Brilora does not hand money to applicants. Grant funds go directly to the clinics and pharmacies. That structure is standard, and it matters for reasons we will come back to.

Multiply that story by a few dozen and you have the landscape. The Tinina Q. Cade Foundation in Maryland offers up to $10,000 and is one of the few that funds adoption alongside treatment. BabyQuest has been running twice-yearly cycles for over a decade. The Coalition for Family Building in Chicago says it has awarded $2.1 million across eleven years, and reports that in its most recent cycle it received 87 applications and gave out 15 grants. The Stork Foundation told Newsweek it anticipates awarding $100,000 to $150,000 this cycle, enough for roughly ten to fifteen families.

These are not large organizations. They are, mostly, people running a fund out of the time they have left over.

At least eight of the seventeen programs we reviewed charge a non-refundable application fee, generally between $35 and $75.

Taken one at a time, $50 is nothing next to a $20,000 cycle, but these types of applications can add up quickly. Advisors and support groups routinely tell families to apply broadly, because the odds on any single grant are poor. Apply to six fee-charging programs and you have spent roughly $300 to $400, non-refundable. How poor are the odds? Almost nobody publishes them. The two figures we could find are the ones above: five awards out of more than 450 applications in one joint cycle, and fifteen out of 87 at the Coalition for Family Building. That is a range of about 1% to 17%, drawn from two programs, which is all anyone has to go on.

There is a reasonable defense of the fee. Reviewing applications costs money, and a fee filters out people who are not serious. There is also a reasonable objection, which is that a flat fee is regressive by design: it costs the same whether you have $200,000 in the bank or $2,000, and it is charged to everyone while the benefit goes to a few.

A few programs have found ways around it. Gift of Parenthood waives its $75 fee for applicants who raise $250 from at least two supporters, which solves the cash problem by converting it into a social one. The Jewish Fertility Foundation and the Stork Foundation charge nothing at all.

This is where reading seventeen sets of criteria side by side becomes genuinely clarifying. Four patterns turn up again and again.

Almost every program requires a documented infertility diagnosis from a reproductive endocrinologist. Most carve out an exception for single applicants and same-sex couples, which is the right call and increasingly standard.

But a diagnosis is not free and it is not nearby for everyone. ASRM’s disparities opinion notes that 18 million women of reproductive age live in areas with no assisted reproduction clinic at all, and that as of 2017, thirteen states had five or fewer reproductive endocrinologists working in accredited practices. The diagnosis requirement is not arbitrary, but it does mean the people furthest from care are screened out before they can ask for help paying for it.

The most common clause across these programs is some version of financial stability. Applicants are asked to confirm that they have basic health insurance, adequate living arrangements and the means to support a child. BabyQuest requires that at least one partner maintain employment, that applicants own or lease a residence, and that they have health coverage with sufficient prenatal benefits. Giving Grace in Minnesota requires the same employment condition and the same coverage condition.

Read that again in sequence. These are funds for people who cannot afford treatment, and they ask applicants to demonstrate that they can afford a child. Both requirements are defensible on their own. Together they define a band: too poor to pay for IVF, secure enough to satisfy a stability review.

This one is a genuine contradiction across the sector. The Fertility Foundation of Texas, Parental Hope, ANEDEN Gives and others require applicants to be uninsured for fertility treatment or to have exhausted their benefits. Meanwhile Nest Egg requires proof of current medical insurance, and BabyQuest and Giving Grace require basic coverage with prenatal benefits.

Both rules make sense from inside the organization that wrote them. From the applicant’s side, improving your insurance situation can disqualify you from one program and qualify you for another, and there is no way to know which without reading every set of criteria yourself.

Nest Egg’s published criteria are the most demanding we found. Applicants must be US citizens of at least four years, resident in Connecticut or New York, between 25 and 44, with household income under $125,000 single or $200,000 partnered, non-smoking (both partners), with a BMI of 38 or under for the applicant and 40 or under for a male partner, no existing children, and clinical markers including AMH of at least 1.0, FSH of 10 or under, an antral follicle count of at least 10, and a partner sperm count above 5 million motile. Treatment must happen at one of two named clinics.

Every individual criterion has a rationale, and a small foundation choosing among many applicants has to choose somehow. But stacked together, these criteria have the effect of selecting the applicants most likely to succeed clinically. Which also means the hardest cases, which are often the most expensive ones, are the least likely to be funded.

Other restrictions worth knowing about before you spend an evening on an application: Hope for Fertility requires a government-issued marriage certificate, applied equally to LGBTQ couples. The Jewish Fertility Foundation requires at least one Jewish parent and caps applicants at one existing child. Parental Hope requires that all grant-covered treatment happen at a single clinic in Cincinnati. The Bundle of Joy Fund requires a diagnosis from one of three partner clinics in North Carolina, and is open to North Carolina and South Carolina residents. Geography, in other words, is doing a lot of work here, in a system where geography already decides most of it.

Nearly every application asks for a personal statement. Some ask for more. BabyQuest requires applicants to sign a media release consenting to potential interviews as a condition of applying. Brilora’s process includes a video interview and a signed media release alongside the application form and a HIPAA authorization. Parental Hope requires a background check and ongoing reporting on your treatment progress.

None of this is sinister. Foundations raise money by showing donors what the money did, and recipients are usually glad to tell the story. But it is worth naming what the arrangement asks of people: to compose an account of the most private thing in their life, in a persuasive register, for strangers who will rank it against several hundred others, and to agree in advance that the story may be used.

One recipient described the application in an account of winning a grant as a kind of bargain with herself: if I win this, it is a sign to make a family a priority. That is what an essay under these conditions turns into. Not a budget request. A case for your own worthiness.

There is an abundance of published material from people who received a grant, and effectively none from people who applied and did not. Foundations announce winners; nobody publishes the other 445. The binding constraint is the size of the pot, not the quality of what arrives in it. Most of these programs run at least two cycles a year, and a “no” in September doesn’t mean couples should consider applying again during the next open round.

Want to go deeper? NPR’s 1A devoted a full hour to the future of fertility in 2026, including the cost picture.

Several cycles are open or closing in the next few months. Deadlines move, so confirm each one on the organization’s own site before you rely on it.

•       Brilora Fertility Foundation: nine grants open now, closing November 1, 2026. Michigan, California, and one national IVF grant.

•       The Stork Foundation: closes September 30, 2026, with notifications by mid-November. No application fee.

•       Gift of Parenthood: Q3 closes September 30, Q4 runs October 1 to December 31.

•       Bundle of Joy Fund: two 2026 cycles have closed and a third is listed as to be determined. North Carolina and South Carolina residents.

•       Giving Grace Foundation: closes December 31, 2026. Minnesota residents.

•       Fertility Foundation of Texas: winter cycle closes December 31, 2026.

•       BabyQuest and the Cade Foundation: fall deadlines have passed. Spring cycles open early in the new year.

RESOLVE maintains the most complete public directory of these programs.

1.     Do I actually meet every criterion? Marriage, citizenship duration, existing children, BMI, insurance status and named-clinic requirements are where most applications fail.

2.    How many grants did this organization award last cycle, and how many people applied? Ask. Most will tell you. A program giving away five grants and a program giving away fifteen are different propositions for the same $50.

3.    What does the money cover, and what does it not? Medications are a common exclusion. The Coalition for Family Building states outright on its own site that its IVF cycle grant does not cover them, and puts the cost at $3,000 to $7,000.

4.    How long until I know? Four to six weeks after the deadline is typical. If you are timing a cycle, the notification date matters more than the deadline.

5.    Will this affect my taxes? Almost certainly not as income. Charitable grants awarded on need through an open process are generally treated as gifts, and nearly all of these programs pay your clinic rather than you. But grant-funded amounts are not yours to deduct as medical expenses, since you did not pay them. IRS Publication 502 governs what counts as a deductible medical expense. Notably, not one of the organizations we surveyed says anything on its own site about how a grant is treated for the recipient’s taxes. Worth a question to your preparer, and to the foundation.

It is tempting to treat a grant application as a referendum on whether you deserve this. The process is built in a way that invites that reading: the essay, the review, the letter that either comes or does not.

It is worth resisting. What these applications measure, mostly, is fit against a set of criteria written by a small organization trying to make a limited pool of money do the most visible good, under constraints they did not choose either. Apply to the ones you clearly qualify for. Skip the ones where a single criterion rules you out, and keep the fee. And hold onto the fact that 450 people applied for five grants, which says something about the size of the need and nothing whatsoever about the 445.

•       RESOLVE: Fertility Treatment Scholarships and Grants: the broadest public directory, with eligibility summaries.

•       ASRM: Disparities in Access to Effective Treatment for Infertility: the professional body’s own assessment of the access problem.

•       RESOLVE: Insurance Coverage by State: current state-by-state mandate status.

•       IRS Publication 502: what counts as a deductible medical expense, including fertility treatment.

•       NPR 1A: The Future of Fertility in 2026: an hour on cost, policy and access.

Path to Parenthood publishes journalism and education, not medical advice. Everything here is meant to inform the questions you bring to your own care team, not replace their guidance for your specific situation. It is not legal or financial advice either.