Things You'll Need:
- Location to host the drive (church, school, etc)
- Flyers
- Volunteers
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Step 1
The first task in setting up a bone marrow donor drive is to find a location willing to host such an event. We were fortunate that our pastor allowed us to use our church hall to host the drive. Once we established the location, I contacted the local National Marrow Donor Program (NMDP) coordinator for our area and we set the date and time for the event. When seeking a location, be sure that the space is large enough to set up registration tables, tables for people to fill out paperwork and a set of tables for volunteers to help potential donors collect the buccal (cheek) swabs.
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Step 2
Get the word out with Flyers! The NMDP will create flyers for your event and will give you 500 copies. These flyers are very important! We created over 1,000 copies ourselves to put around town. Friends had notices sent out to their church mailing lists and our FedEx driver hung up flyers at all of her business stops along her route. We had a wonderful group of volunteers help distribute flyers. Getting the flyers distributed is a very important step in having a successful bone marrow donor drive.
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Step 3
Contact media outlets. We sent out press releases and contacted the local newspapers, as well. The local paper ran a wonderful piece on our donor drive, which sparked interest by other media such as the TV news and radio stations. Our family was featured on the local news one evening and I was also asked to speak on a local radio station. Churches around town advertised the drive in their weekly bulletins, which was another helpful method of advertising the drive. The local paper also ran a small piece the day before the drive and showed up at the drive to take pictures for an article. We really had great coverage.
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Step 4
Raise money for those who cannot afford the fee to join the registry. We also had to raise money to pay for donors who could not afford the $52 fee to be typed and added to the registry. Caucasians are charged this tax-deductible fee to cover the cost of tissue (HLA) typing, while minorities are typed and added to the registry for free. We were very fortunate to have several local charitable groups who raised money for our cause. A local homeschooling mom's group called, Cheerful Givers, raised quite a bit of money for donors to be typed. We also had many generous friends who donated money to cover the cost of typing. This is something that must be considered when hosting a drive! Most people who come out to be typed assume there is no cost associated with volunteering to be added to the registry.
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Step 5
Set up on the morning of the event. The morning of the event, we showed up early to get the space organized and train volunteers in how to collect samples from the potential donors. We put up signs along the road, set up tables inside and set up a snack bar for the wonderful volunteers who came out to join the registry. We were blessed to get 122 people typed and added to the registry on the day of our bone marrow donor drive. We found out later that this was the largest number of people typed at one drive in our town!
Comments
didi8u said
on 6/22/2009 great tips and advice on how to Host a Bone Marrow Donor Drive. 5* and rec, thanks for sharing.
honeyd81 said
on 6/14/2009 Great Job!!!