The Lil’wrekker is the member of an Arts association here in South Arkansas. They act, do showcases and music revues. Eh, it’s her thing.
Funny, they are doing a Red cross blood drive. As a member in good standing, of course she’s involved. Recruiting and giving out pamphlets.
I grabbed one the pamphlets. I was surprised to find out at the actual Blood drive they give out gifts, hourly door prizes. The big gift is a $700 Walmart gift card.
WTH?
Ok, I get it. They are trying to entice someone who wouldn’t ordinarily donate to sit down and do it.
My problem is; what funds are these prizes and gift cards coming from?
If the Art center is paying for them, why are they having an “event”? Why don’t they just make a cash donation to Red cross?
If Red cross provides it, isn’t that a mis-use of capital they could put to a better use, in that organization?
It’s most likely the Art center paying for it. As you said, gifts for donors encourages them to donate and paying for the prizes is more effective at getting donors in the chairs than making a cash donation. I’m a regular donor myself so I’m happy to hear she’s involved in a blood drive!
I was told not to donate again after blacking out on the table, so thanks for everyone who can do it for me.
My local blood bank is also giving out gift cards and t-shirts to donors. Whole blood donors cannot be paid in cash, but this gets people in the door via a work-around.
Even if the Red Cross is paying for the incentives (I doubt they are) the truth is they need blood more than they need cash on hand. If you donate money to the Red Cross it may go to their incentives to get people to donate blood. Or to the raw materials or payroll involved in collecting blood. I looked it up once and their blood donation revenue and expenses are pretty even.
Some people get mad when they find out that the Red Cross charges for blood but those people have no idea how much it costs to collect blood. And part of those costs might be incentives.
Plus when you get new donors, especially college age, you may get donors for life. The cost of incentives at college drives might have a high ROI. The Red Cross is ruthless in their pursuit of donors. I got sick of them bugging me after I did my first donation in my late 20’s so I just capitulated and have been donating regularly since then.
Those prizes as incentives are always donated. Wal-Mart gets a tax write-off (and probably has a budget for donations). The local Red Cross (or whoever is running the drive) go to businesses and ask for them.
The blood business is big business. The majority of blood donation organizations are non-profit but that doesn’t mean money doesn’t change hands. The hospitals/insurance/patients pay thousands for a transfusion. There is a LOT of overhead in the business and that money comes from the patients/insurance. The price of the prizes are just part of the overhead. Certainly a lot of them are donated, but the organizations go through a lot of money, compared to the cost of running the clinics, a few hundred dollars is in the noise.
I am about to jump back into the blood-donation game. I had been giving at a fairly good clip until I got rejected a couple of times because my blood pressure was too high. I didn’t see the point in bothering to sign up anymore until I could figure out what was wrong. Now that I am back on a drug that I had stopped taking because of a miscommunication – it didn’t auto-refill and I assumed that the doctors had meant for it to stop – I think that I’ll be able to successfully open a vein for the good folks at the local Red Cross.
