I know that high school blood drives are definitely on the blood drive calendars for this fall and they are a sure way to recruit new blood donors. But what about the elementary and middle schools in your area? Of course, I know they can’t donate but the faculty, parents and the community can come out and support these drives. It’s a simple way to fill in blood drives to the holes on your calendar. Children are some of the best recruiters in the world and introducing the community blood program to them is also a great educational tool.
If you don’t already have an elementary blood donor program in place at your blood center, this 2010-2011 school year would be a great time to start.

As a former recruiter, I spent many of my days rallying up the troops at the local elementary schools.
I would start by contacting the principal(s) to set up a day for the blood drive.

After that, I would schedule a day with the school(s) to see when I could come and speak with the children.

I preferred a pep rally setting where I would have our blood drop mascot accompany me so that he could meet the students. After a short presentation to the students on how they can help save lives by recruiting an adult to come to donate at the blood drive, I would tell them what neat gift they would get for being “HEROES”. Gift Ideas varied from pencils to t-shirts. Fortunately, this school year we have one of the most popular items available in the market, BANDZ. These are exciting youngsters all over the place. We also have t-shirts to compliment the bands. If the BANDZ are not your thing, we have plenty of gifts that children would love.

And the last thing, make this a FUN event so the kids, faculty and parents will be ready to host another blood drive next time around.

If you would like to discuss this more, please contact me at roz@donorgifts.com or call me at 317-575-3358.

Also those of you who would like to share your ideas, please do so by chiming in and your name will be entered into a drawing for a one week rental of ½ Pint, our blood drop mascot.

For years blood centers have struggled to develop effective strategies for first-time donor retention.  In many centers, the rate of first-time donors who never return is as great as 50%.  Typically, first time donors require more time and attention when recruiting and processing than return donors. This then results in higher costs for education, advertising, donor screening and collection labor time for the blood center.

Research in Blood Donor Motivation tells us that donors want to be involved, but in order to stay involved as a donor, their intrinsic needs should be met.  These include:

• providing a safe welcoming environment
• understanding the need for blood
• understanding how their donation helps
• feeling valuable
• elevating self-worth
• Made to feel individually special
• Feeling like a partner with the blood center

One very effective tactic has found to be follow-up with the donor after the donation is made.  Sometimes this can be done personally through a phone call, but this becomes very labor intensive for blood bank personnel.

Another way to make a good impression and grab the donor’s attention is for them to receive a gift in the mail with a profound personal message reinforcing the importance of their recent donation and how their return visits will be even more valuable to the community.

Depending on budgets (and as more and more centers recognize and evaluate the value of regular donors, this budget number increases), gift packages may be customized. An effective package may include gift items such as a t-shirt, hero necklace, drink tumbler, can koozie, key chain or other personalized donor gifts.

These gifts imprinted with the blood donor center logo not only provide recognition for the donor, but publicity and community awareness for the blood center.

Are you gearing up for High School t-shirts for the fall?  Now is the time to start thinking how you are going to motivate your High School donors to give this school year.  High School kids nowadays won’t wear anything that’s not “hip” so we have taken High School t-shirts and added something different to the back of them.

Taking your basic t-shirt design and adding The High School Blood Tour to the back and listing all the schools that participate has been a huge success.  Not only has it gotten kids more excited, but the schools love it too.  Listing all the High Schools that commit to booking blood drives on the back of the shirt has increased bookings, created a sense of “early booking” urgency with the High Schools to make sure their name doesn’t get left off the Blood Tour t-shirt and it’s given the kids something they can remember beyond High School that they, along with thousands of kids in their community saved countless lives.

Going beyond the t-shirts, we also created “tickets” to The Blood Tour by having appointment tickets at an early sign up day in the cafeteria.  It’s a great way to get kids to commit earlier and it’s a great way for your blood center to plan your blood drive better.   Imagine looking around the lunch room watching the donors compare their appointment times to give blood, much like they would compare where they are sitting for a concert!

Visit www.DonorGifts.com to see our latest High School designs.

Look at this cool marketing tool we developed for Pepsi.

I’m not sure just how blood centers will use such a thing to get blood donations—yet!  Perhaps you can help with the idea?

Grand Openings are huge events for Pepsi.  This slide will be used when Target or Walmart open a new store.  It will also be used at employee picnics.  One Pepsi bottler even plans to use it at their state fair exhibit!

The manufacturer who makes our Inflatable Blood Drops and Inflatable Blood Drop Costumes also makes products like this.

If you can think of an application, let me know!  If there’s a way it can help blood centers find donors—we will bring one into development!

6 weeks….that’s how long it took my local Starbucks to re-stock their acrylic tumblers and they sold out within a few days.  You may be thinking what exactly does this have to do with donor gifts?  Because you can now offer these same tumblers (that people REALLY want) to your donors and sponsors!  This is one of the coolest products to hit the market in a while.  This is an item that people are willing to pay a lot of money for.  This is something that they will line up to donate at your blood center to get for free!

 These tumblers are a sure hit with every demographic, from high schools and colleges to church groups.  Donors would use it every day, in the car, home or office, your logo prominently displayed.

As you consider your next recognition item, consider this hot, new tumbler from OmniSource and give donors something useful  that they don’t have to go to Starbucks for.