Blood simple: NorthBay biz takes a look at local blood centers and explains why, especially in a down economy, blood donation is as important as ever.
When we need blood, we count on it being available. But given the low percentage of the population that actually donates, it’s clear that most of us take for granted that others have donated in our stead or may even be unaware of how the blood was obtained in the first place. That’s where community blood banks come in.
Two major blood banks that serve various parts of the North Bay—Blood Bank of the Redwoods and Blood Centers of the Pacific—provide a way for individuals to donate blood to help support those in need and save lives.
How it started
Blood Bank of the Redwoods (BBR), a nonprofit organization and full-service blood center that provides lifesaving blood products to hospitals in Sonoma, Lake and Mendocino counties 24 hours a day, seven days a week, was started by a group of Santa Rosa citizens in 1948. Following the near-death experience of a new mother with a 2-day-old baby because Sonoma County didn’t have enough blood products readily available for her, citizens clearly saw the need for a blood center to serve their communities. Since then, Blood Bank of the Redwoods has been an important part of the community’s health care system.
The communities BBR serves need more than 43,000 units of blood each year, which means the organization must collect 120 units every day that get sent to hospitals, multiple clinics and various home-care agencies. In 2008, Blood Bank of the Redwoods put its one-millionth pint of blood into the community bloodstream.
Blood Centers of the Pacific (BCP) was started by two San Francisco physicians, Dr. DeWitt K. Burnham and Dr. John Upton, who explored ways to supply blood in adequate amounts to people who needed it—well before the concept of a community blood bank existed. Although some hospitals had small drawing stations, there weren’t sufficient methods of obtaining blood and storing it for later use. The two pioneers decided to pursue the idea of a community blood bank and in June 1941, Irwin Memorial Blood Bank, the nation’s first nonprofit community blood bank, opened its doors to its first volunteer blood donors.
After years of growth, the blood bank expanded its blood collection operations throughout Northern California. Soon, it became clear that a bigger facility was needed for its headquarters and, in April 1955, Irwin opened its new doors at Masonic and Turk Streets in San Francisco (where BCP’s headquarters exist today).
In 1997, the Irwin Memorial Blood Bank merged with Peninsula Blood Bank to become Blood Centers of the Pacific—a name that encompasses the large region served by the organization. In 1999, Blood Centers of the Pacific affiliated with Blood Systems, the nation’s largest blood collection organization. Today, it produces more than 200,000 blood components and distributes about 145,000 pints of blood and 24,000 units of platelets to more than 40 hospitals throughout the Bay Area annually.
Finding donors
Blood banks use several avenues to try and obtain blood donations, including encouraging individual donations at the blood bank facility through advertising, public relations and regular correspondence with their database of donors. They also conduct blood drives at community events, high schools and colleges, churches and businesses. Strategically placed mobile, self-contained blood donation buses throughout the community also make it easy for people to donate.
“Nationally, only about 37 percent of the population is eligible to donate, so we’re fishing from a really small pool,” says Kent Corley, public relations and fund development manager for Blood Bank of the Redwoods. “When I started here five years ago, it was about 65 percent. But the FDA regulates us, and when it comes across things—like mad cow disease, for example—it can decide there’s a potential problem with the blood supply. Today, anyone who’s spent three months in the UK or many other Western European countries three months cumulatively in the years between 1980 and 1996 is now permanently deferred from donating. Just that one thing knocked out a huge pool of the population that could have been donors. There are many other things [that impact donor eligibility status], such as certain medications, previous illness and travel to regions with the potential for malaria…. We’re against a real headwind in terms of who can be donors.”
While the whole blood donation process only takes about an hour (and only about eight to 10 minutes of that is for the actual donation), only 4 to 5 percent of the eligible population donates blood. People mostly cite lack of time, a fear of needles or the simple fact that they’ve never been asked to donate. Some cultures harbor deep-seeded but completely unsubstantiated concerns of contracting a disease from donating.
“We’re taught at a young age that needles aren’t your friends—you don’t want to have anything to do with them,” says Corley. “So that kind of starts the mental process of people thinking, ‘Oh, maybe I don’t want to do that.’ So from a PR standpoint, we do everything we can to explain the benefits and why it’s important.”
There are many types of blood drives that can be sponsored, including employer-supported ones, in which the employer supports all of its willing and able staff to donate blood on company time. “In-Honor-Of” blood drives are hosted in someone’s name to honor them. A “replenishment” blood drive benefits one special patient for a specific surgery, or replenishes the blood used in emergency for that patient. A “family and friends challenge drive” is where individuals rally those closest to them to help with a scheduled medical procedure, without placing an extra strain on the community’s blood supply. “Donor match drives” include a screening test and prescreened donor drive to match specific blood components to a specific patient, in most cases a relative. Retail location drives are hosted by busy grocery store shopping centers, strip malls and plazas. Annual blood drive events, such as World Blood Donor Day, Bloodstock and the Margaritaville blood drive, sponsored by Blood Bank of the Redwoods, take place at the blood center in Santa Rosa. Surprisingly, a major source of blood donations comes from blood drives at schools—mainly high schools.
“High schools are very important to us,” says Christina Mihalas, field recruitment supervisor for Blood Centers of the Pacific. “Kids say, ‘Go to chemistry class or go hang out with my friends, donate blood and eat snacks?!’ We collect a lot of blood at high schools. Without them, we’d really have a hard time meeting the needs of patients.”
Corley has seen the same successful outcome at high school-sponsored drives for Blood Bank of the Redwoods. “We were down at Rancho Cotate high school today,” recalls Corley. “We probably had about 100 kids donating. They get all excited about it. So it really is this social thing for them. It’s great that the schools let them do this and encourage them. When you think about it, it’s a community service whether you’re in high school or anywhere—but you don’t need any training. You can save lives as a 16- or 17-year-old kid.”
Businesses give back
While high school and college-sponsored drives make up about 25 percent of all community-based blood drives, businesses (including private companies and government and health care agencies) play a significant role as well.
“Businesses play a huge role in the success of our counties and what we do in providing blood,” says Ryan Benjamin, recruitment and donor services manager for BBR. “Things have changed as far as businesses go. There was a time when the community had tons and tons of thriving businesses, with many employees, which allowed us to come in and do huge blood drives. That’s changed. Nonetheless, we still depend on that crowd.”
With each employer-sponsored blood drive, the blood banks have a goal to have at least 25 people register to donate blood. Therefore, they generally only approach those companies with at least 100 employees to make it worth their while to support the drive.
“We’re only able to go to companies or accounts with 100 or more employees, because of our staffing resources,” says Mihalas. “We consider 10 to 15 percent of a company’s participation a successful blood drive. We have people call and say, ‘We want to run a blood drive,’ but then only seven people show up. It’s so expensive for us to do this, obviously, and pay our staff. So, it’s really costly to us when we don’t have a successful drive. Often, we’ll combine accounts—or encourage them to join forces in recruitment efforts—so we can be more efficient as well.”
However, even companies with less than 100 employees can partner with other businesses or organizations to sponsor a drive together, or invite the public to participate.
“A lot of our businesses defy the odds everyday,” says Benjamin. “We may go to a company that only has 100 employees and, in some cases, get 25 of those people to donate. Some of those businesses we open up to the public—for those that allow the community onto their property.”
“Good examples of that are Exchange Bank and Redwood Credit Union,” says Corley. “One of their branches may not have enough people to really have a blood drive there, but they’re willing to open it up for us to call people in that area to come to the bank to donate.”
The blood banks support hosting employers in all aspects of organizing and promoting a blood drive, and just ask the employer to communicate the drive to its staff. Most employer-sponsored drives take place in a room in the company’s facility or in the blood bank’s mobile unit in the parking lot, although the drive can be held at a collection center as well. Keeping the drive on an employer’s premises, however, makes it easier for employees to donate and minimizes their time out of the office.
“A blood drive doesn’t require anything from [employers] other than donating their employees’ time,” explains Mihalas. “We’re a community blood bank—all of the blood stays within the community and helps our neighbors—maybe even someone who lives down the street.”
No one knows or appreciates that more than someone who’s actually been a recipient of donated blood. One such survivor is Hank Brock, who required 58 units of blood over a 40 day period. “From the first evening, when my immune system began attacking my red cells faster than I could produce new ones and my body was in jeopardy of shutting down, [the Blood Bank of the Redwoods] team worked diligently to find a match for my blood, which saved my life,” he writes in a testimonial on the BBR website.
“The Blood Bank did everything it could to ensure I had a ready supply. In addition to all the work the lab did matching my blood every 72 hours, many blood drives stayed open late to accommodate donors, and some [Blood Bank] employees even donated blood in my honor. The whole time I was in Kaiser Hospital, I felt sort of like the guy in the Verizon commercial [who’s backed by] a whole army of people. Instead of ‘Can you hear me now?’ it was ‘Can I have more blood now?’—and every time, the Blood Bank came through.”
A demonstration of commitment
Besides helping to support their community, there can be an added motivation for employers to sponsor a drive, as well. It demonstrates to their staff and the community at large that they’re a community-minded, philanthropic organization that gives back. Especially these days, when companies may not be able to donate as much financially as they have in the past, they can still donate their time.
“It also really instills a good feeling in the employees to see their employer doing something like this,” says Mihalas. “It’s good PR. People feel good that their employers are providing this. We also look at it as a service—we’re making it as convenient as possible for their employees to donate.”
The Exchange Bank training department has helped coordinate blood drives for the support divisions of the bank over the last couple decades, and it finds the drives well-coordinated and easy to facilitate. “We typically host the drives in one of our conference rooms,” explains Training Director Trudy Jamieson. “This provides a comfortable atmosphere and a location that’s readily accessible to employees.”
“[Blood Bank of the Redwoods] runs it very efficiently and definitely has a system that makes it easy for a company to coordinate with them. You have to have a minimum number of folks sign up to have a drive take place—which makes perfect sense, given the amount of resources involved. We just never have a problem getting enough folks to show up.
“We run it as an open sign-up,” Jamieson continues. “We book people for a certain window of time, and that seems to work really well. We also send out a comprehensive announcement before a drive that shows the value of donating and how many people are helped with a single donation. Compelling statistics are a good reminder to people of what a difference [their donation] can make.”
The need is growing
Like every other business and nonprofit organization, blood bank collections have been hit hard by the economic downturn. Some businesses that used to sponsor drives on a regular basis are no longer around or have cut back on staff so much, they can’t afford even a moment out of the office.
“A lot of companies out there have been forced to do more with less,” says Benjamin. “They’re laying off workers, and the people who remain are taking on additional duties. Sometimes it’s just a little tougher to take that hour to donate—it’s harder to free up that time. Or, for employers trying to watch every dollar they’re spending, it’s difficult to be able to free up 20 to 25 people for an hour of the day when operations already require them to do more. That’s probably one of the toughest things—everyone kind of tied down to their seat to make sure work is taken care of—making sure the job gets done. That’s why we’d love for them to come to the center even on their own time—on a weekend or in the evenings. We’re open up late: until 7 p.m. Monday through Thursday.”
So what can an employer do that wants to get involved?
“Just becoming more associated with the blood bank in general through communication, partnership and an exchange of information about the importance of donating—our locations, our website—things like that [can help the blood bank],” says Benjamin. “And there are different things we can do to help employers do some fun things for their employees. We do a lot of things that lighten it up for them, like hosting pizza nights or movie nights at the blood bank, or coordinating competitions between companies to see who can get the most donors.”
Even for businesses that have needed to tighten their financial belt, this is one way they can still remain philanthropic.
“Businesses that may be deciding they can’t financially support their favorite charities this year can support their community by letting us come on campus, or letting their employees come here,” says Corley. “We can enhance a businesses’ image by being in that relationship. Redwood Credit Union can tell its shareholders, ‘We’re giving back to the community because we’re working with Blood Bank of the Redwoods.’”
And of course, one can’t put a value on the feeling you get when you help another human being out of the goodness of your heart—no strings attached.
“I don’t know anyone who hasn’t felt good about donating blood,” says Benjamin. “You come in, and when the process is over, you just feel good about something you’ve done that day, and you know what you did will help someone.”
That’s truly a random act of kindness.
