How to set up an Organ, Blood or Marrow Donation Drive for UAN Day of Service

What type of drive is there?
What did the organizer of the UAN program provide me with information on?
Is there a big difference between the three types of donation drives?

Transcription

1 How to set up an Organ, Blood or Marrow Donation Drive for UAN Day of Service Jim Lawrence - UWSP 1) Identify what type of Drive your UAN is interested in a. This may sound like a silly first step, but there may be some very good reasons for your choice. For some UAN Chapters, there isn t a big difference between these three different types of donation drives. However, in many UAN Chapters there will be a compelling reason to choose one over the other. Perhaps a member has been directly helped by an organ donor (this happened in my UAN). Perhaps a member has had a close friend or family member impacted by an organ donation or a blood donation. These types of experiences can and likely will increase the level of passion and involvement of the members of your UAN 2) Become recognized by your Student Government. a. Your UAN Chapter should be recognized by your SGA for a few reasons. i. SGA are routinely in charge of allocation of a certain percentage of student fees to student organizations. This is YOUR money! But you are going to have to work to have access to it. In order to be recognized by your SGA, your UAN Chapter is going to have to be organized according to the standards set by your campus SGA. Your campus already has many student organizations that are recognized by the SGA. Model your UAN after these clubs to save time and not re-invent the wheel. Your UAN may already be recognized by the SGA. In that case you are ready for the next step. ii. One of the main reasons to be recognized by the SGA is to obtain resources to run your club. Resources such as meeting room facilities, travel arrangements (university cars and vans) and of course money. It is almost certain that you will need to form a budget to submit to your SGA for approval. This is where you ask for some of your student money to help run your UAN. This money can make or break your ability to set up any outreach activity, including hosting an organ or blood donation drive. This point can not be stressed enough. Be organized and have a thoughtful budget put together to present to the SGA. One of the items in the budget should be to provide resources for the donation drive. More on what types of things cost money to host a drive later. 3) Partner Up!

2 a. Most UAN Chapters are not going to have lots of experience hosting donation drives. That is fine. There are many, many places to find resources to help out. One of the main resources to look for is a hosting partner. This partnership is for several reasons: i. A partner organization is very likely to have extensive experience organizing donor drives much like the one you hope to host. These organizations normally need willing, able people power to fulfill their missions. That is where you and your UAN come in. You have lots of willing, able members who want to help. ii. Don t overlook the fact that by finding a partner, you can reduce several levels of redundancy. Things like advertising, donor recruitment, site selection only need to be done by one of the partners and it s likely that one of the partners has a better ability in some of these areas that does the other partner. iii. Don t step on someone else s feet. This also isn t obvious, but if there is already a group that has campus wide blood donation drives, you don t want to host a competing event. At minimum, potential donors will be confused and turnout for either event suffers. At worst, the bad will created by competing events may endanger your status with the SGA. No one wins in that scenario. Having a partner reduces this possibility. b. But how does one go about finding a partner? This takes a bit of work, but it s not that onerous. You should expect to take about minutes of your time to find excellent leads on potential partners. First off, sit down with a computer and start to do some searching. i. If you are thinking about a blood donation drive, the American Red Cross has a lot of very, very good information on hosting blood drives and partnership arrangements. Start looking here: This is a jumping in place on the Red Cross website that is packed full of information that might help you. 1. In some areas, the Red Cross is not the best, local option for blood drives. Dive into either another web search or the local phone book to find a local hospital that has a phlebotomy department. That s easy enough, now find a contact or phone number so that you can ask about if the hospital organizes any local blood drives or if they know who is the local agency in charge. ii. If you are interested in an organ or bone marrow donation drive, the Red Cross is not likely to be the best partner, but searching via web-based resources still works. For organ and marrow donations, often local, county or state agencies are either in charge or in direct contact with

3 potential partners for your UAN. For example, here in Wisconsin I did a simple web search for organ donation and turned up a state agency called Wisconsin Organ and Tissue Donation Program (found here for those interested: Within 5 minutes I had sent an to this program and within one day I had and phone contact with the organizers, who provided me with an abundance of information on how to host an event, who to partner with, examples of past events and how they were organized. They were thrilled to hear from me and our conversations energized both of us towards action. Anyone can do this for their city, county and/or state. It truly takes just a couple of minutes. iii. Don t live in Wisconsin? Want to think national? How about: This is another excellent site with information, including this page dedicated to finding organ donation agencies in all 50 states, including Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands: c. Now that you ve made contact with a partner, you need to initial conversations between your UAN and the partner. Find out what strengths your partner brings and also what strengths your partner believes that your UAN brings to the team. Discuss, in broad terms first and more detailed as you move forward, what each partners responsibilities will be. Make sure that your UAN can meet these responsibilities. Sometimes your UAN is going to have to say no to certain obligations because they are not likely achievable. Be careful to not over promise in any partnership. Under promise and over deliver has always been good advice. Your conversations will help guide your UAN forward in the necessary direction. Make sure to keep accurate notes on your conversations and especially on the items each partner has promised to deliver. These notes are a rough action plan for your UAN. 4) Set a date. This is pretty self-explanatory. Some of this the ASBMB will help with, in terms of a national day of service. However, maybe that date can not work for some reason. Work with your UAN members and campus to pick a date where lots of students are going to be available, i.e. don t hold an event over spring break. Work with your partner to see if they have suggestions for when to hold the event. Bring all of this knowledge into one meeting and you should be able to find a date that works the best for your event. 5) Find a place to host the event. This may be more difficult than setting a date. First off, you need to contact your administration in order to secure a spot to host the event. Most Universities have several spots for exactly these kinds of events. But these places may be

4 in heavy use by other organizations. You need to think well in to the future to be first in line in these circumstances. Any donor drive is going to benefit from increased recruitment of potential donors. One way of enhancing the recruitment of donors is to hold the event in a high student traffic area. Student Unions are excellent for this. Science building atriums are also excellent spaces for these events. But you have to be organized in order to procure the right to use these spaces. Your SGA may be able to help with this process. Going to your Biology/Chemistry/Biochemistry/Medical Sciences departments and asking is another good way to find out how to reserve these spaces. Keep in mind that you will need access beyond just the physical space. You might need keys to the building to setup the night before. You might need access to special rooms, like storage rooms. You very likely will need access to one or more tables to sign up donors. You might need clipboards or pens to make signing up donors easier. These are the king of small details that are easy to overlook, but if you get them right, the event will most certainly run more smoothly. 6) Contact Andrea Anastasio (aanastasio@asbmb.org) at the ASBMB offices to get some giveaway goodies from the ASBMB. These will vary from year to year and they can and will run out, but some examples are temporary tattoos, stickers, etc. 7) Plan your staff. Once you have found a partner and discussed the specifics of the event, you ll need to decide how many people you ll need to staff your drive. Because your staff is very likely to be undergraduate students, you will need a plan for a revolving set of people manning the event. As some students go off to class, you ll need others to show up to the event. A little overlap between staffers is certainly a positive thing. You will want to have a clear schedule of who is where and doing what role for the entire event, including setup and breakdown. 8) How about some unique ideas? Your donation drive should be fun for everyone, donors and staffers included. What can you do to make the event more fun for everyone? How about asking if your partner has any small give away type of prizes? Buttons, stickers, temporary tattoos, etc. are all great ways to both advertise your event and add some fun. What about t-shirts for your UAN members who are staffing the event? T-shirts are a great reward for the work and also a great way to draw attention to your event. What about posters showing the science involved in the event. For example, maybe something showing how organ rejection works. How about how the science behind blood typing. How about the genesis of leukemia? The ideas on what science to include are almost limitless. As a UAN, you have the perfect people to create or at least describe this type of information to the potential donors.

5 9) Finally, or at least almost finally, hold the event. By the time the day of the event rolls around, you and your UAN should be well prepared. Your conversations with your partner should have given much insight into what should happen in a normal donor drive. Your conversations with the University administration should have given much information on how the building/room/space needs to be organized. It is always a good policy to have more staff members on hand than you think you ll need. Things happen and extra people can help out in unexpected circumstances. That is easier said than done as staffing with the appropriate numbers of workers will likely be a concern for most UAN chapters. 10) Truly Finally. Hold a follow up meeting with both your UAN and with your partner to discuss what happened. What went right? Was this fun? Was it worthwhile, considering the work that went into the event? Did the event meet the expectations of your UAN and your partner? What could have been better? These types of conversations are the groundwork for the next year s event. Take good notes during these conversations. Make sure these notes are kept to use the next time the organizational meetings are held. Your UAN students will graduate, but don t let this information graduate and leave your UAN. These notes will make hosting future events so much easier if you have partner contact information, do s and don ts already outlined.