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Easy Tips for Daily Recruitment from a Seasoned Blood Donor

Posted on: Tuesday, March 08, 2011

Category: Announcements, Events

Submitted by CaridianBCT

He can’t perform brain surgery or consult on a clinical trial. He doesn’t have $45 million dollars to open a hospital. But Al Whitney saves lives. And just as importantly, he’s dedicated to recruiting others to do the same.

As professional donor recruiters, we have expert strategies and proven processes. But do we walk the talk in our everyday lives?

Founder of Platelets Across America, Al raises awareness about blood donation by donating via apheresis in every state. On his recent trip through Colorado and a stop at Denver’s Bonfils Blood Center, he made an apheresis platelet donation via CaridianBCT’s Trima Accel® Automated Blood Collection System. Al walks the talk. Sharing his experiences with CaridianBCT, he talked about taking action to combat his belief that the No. 1 reason why people don’t donate is that no one ever asked.

Take a trip to a restaurant as an example. Just last month Al was eating out in Cleveland. When the server took his order, Al asked, “Can I ask you a question? Are you a blood donor?” The woman replied no, but tucked a card Al provided into her pocket, which included the name and phone number of the local blood center, and Al’s e-mail address. A couple of days later, Al received an e-mail from that waitress, who said that his one little question had gotten her thinking, and she had just returned from donating blood. “It can be just that simple,” Al said.

Al takes this approach in line at the grocery store or theatre, at the mechanic and in a doctor’s waiting room, believing face-to-face recruitment makes the biggest impact. After 46 years of donating blood, and talking to everyone he encounters about blood donation, he offers a few of his own tips and advice:  

• Encourage colleagues to raise awareness; if a blood center has 200 employees, they have 200 recruiters.
• Provide all employees with generic blood center business cards to hand out to anyone they talk to about donation; people may forget a conversation, but will be reminded later when they rediscover the card in a pocket.
• Get up from your desk and personally greet donors who you recruited when they arrive at the blood center—make the connection to increase the likelihood they’ll return.
• Acknowledge any fear of needles, but offer the perspective of the patient who has no choice about needles during the course of lifesaving treatment.
• Collect donor and patient testimonials to reinforce the message; display in lobby; change frequently.

“Make anyone who donates blood, or someone who is considering it, feel like the most important person in the world,” Al said. “Let them know when they donate double red cells, platelets, plasma or whole blood, they give a child another birthday; they give a father the chance to walk his daughter down the aisle.”

Al will be onhand as an exhibitor at the ADRP Annual Conference in Minneapolis, MN from May 18-20.

But in the meantime, Al wants to know: what recruitment techniques work for you in your everyday lives?