 Again, everybody, thank you and welcome to another episode of The Non-Profit Show, first one of 2022. We're super excited to have you with us. We're super excited to have Sue Sue from Vitalant, Vitalant. I had to correct myself, Vitalant. And we're gonna be talking about blood banking and nonprofits and how we can kind of work together in this sector. It's such an interesting conversation. Before we do though, I wanna remind everyone, I'm Julia Patrick, CEO of the American Non-Profit Academy. My trumpet co-host, Jared Ransom is not with us today. She'll be back tomorrow. So you'll get to hear what she was doing for the day. Again, we wanna thank all of our sponsors who are here with us day in and day out and who help us start the new year fresh with some exciting new content. Sue, Sue. Okay, communications manager. You know, I have a soft spot for people that are in communications. So we're super excited to have you with us today talking about something that we don't really talk about the blood bank industry in relationship to the nonprofit sector. So I'm super excited, welcome. Thank you so very much. I'm so pleased to be here. Well, okay, let's get right into it. The status of the national blood supply. Well, as I mentioned just a moment ago, the week between Christmas and New Year's Day is the lowest week of the year, traditionally for blood donations because we lose most of our sources for people to host blood drives. Of course, the schools are not in session, people are on vacation, they're preparing for family holiday activities. So we go through a period of time where there's very few blood drives to host, but we start the new year off with a very busy surgery schedule in the sense that there are essential surgeries that people need to have that they've postponed over the holidays but in January, they schedule those surgeries now that the holidays are over. So we go into a very high blood transfusion time of the year. Right now, looking at the blood supply across the country, we have an urgent need for donors of all blood types but a critical need for donors with type O blood, that's the universal blood type used in emergencies and traumas, type O is the blood that can be substituted for other types as well as we have a critical need for platelets which are the clotting factors in the blood that cancer and leukemia patients depend upon. Wow. And so what is your prognosis, if you will? I mean, are you gonna, are you seeing that because of this escalation of this new COVID variant that that's gonna further impact what's going on or what is your sense, if I tell them? Well, of course, anytime people aren't healthy, they're asked to defer from giving blood. So anybody who's currently fighting COVID-19 is not an eligible blood donor but I do wanna remind the public that COVID-19 is not passed on through the blood supply, it is a respiratory element. So the concern isn't that you would give your blood and not know you had COVID and then you could get somebody sick. Really, the concern is when you're sick, you need to stay home so you're not at the blood center exposing other people and vitality staff, other donors and staff to the COVID-19 virus and you need the antibodies in your blood that your body is producing to help heal from COVID-19. But our biggest impact that we've seen from COVID-19 is that the number of blood drives are down by about 33% and that's because of virtual workforces and organizations that just do not have the capability right now to host a blood drive to help keep our blood supply strong. So that kind of leads me to another question and that is it sounds to me like the nonprofits in our sector and we'll get into this a little bit more but it seems to me like one of those big pieces to the pie is getting these reciprocal organizations to run drives. And I have to tell you, I don't think I ever thought of it that way. Well, you know. Absolutely, any organization that has the ability to network with 100 people or more probably has enough members to be able to host a blood drive. They don't need to necessarily be in a physical office. Although if they are, that makes it even easier to have a successful blood drive. But think about all of the constituents and people that the nonprofits work with, they're mailing lists. Look at the people that you can network with to help encourage them to donate blood. Actually during the time of COVID-19, it's a way to keep people engaged with their organization. So if you have a large email list of people that are supporters of that nonprofit, it's a way to bring people together towards a common cause by hosting a blood drive for the members. And then not to mention that there are a lot of nonprofits that actually have a connection with the blood supply like the donor network of Arizona is one that we work with here where I work is people who are undergoing treatments for cancer or organ transplants and things along those lines, their members actually are big blood recipients. So there may be ways to identify people who could share their stories about how blood donors have helped aid in the recovery of people needing organ transplants and fighting cancers and leukemias. So that's a fascinating way to look at it. And now because of my communications, like I said, communications in my background and the things I love, how does that work when Vitalin is trying to talk about their messaging and what they're doing and then you have maybe nonprofit XYZ that's trying to talk about their situation. Do you all like, how do you work together, I guess, in trying to share that story or that message? Well, you know, if you have a patient that you're working with that needs a bone marrow transplant or a person who needs an organ transplant or somebody who's successfully fought cancer, then what we can do is work with the family of that patient to share their story, get all the necessary releases in order to share their story and use that to not only talk about how people have benefited from that particular patient has benefited from blood transfusion, but also from that organization and the efforts that they're doing to help find that, fight that cancer or do that organ transplant or that bone marrow transplant. It's a great way to just find out what you have in common with another organization. It's fascinating that you would bring that up because, you know, so often we work in silos and we're kind of afraid to share that, you know, a lot of times if you get on a news broadcast, you're lucky if you get a true 90 seconds. That's not a lot of time to share stories and try and be unified, but at the same time, put your own organization forward. So I'm fascinated by that. So when you talk about this process and you're looking at, you know, nonprofits, reaching out to an organization such as yours and you're talking about a bigger picture issue, do you find that you have some reticence or do you tend to work with the same nonprofits or what does that landscape look like? Well, you know, I see a lot of nonprofits that we've worked with over and over again as far as, you know, sharing stories. Be the Match, the National Marrow Donor Program. We've frequently worked with them to offer not only to share stories of patients, but also to let them come to some of our larger community blood drives to talk with donors that are at those blood drives about becoming future marrow donors or signing up for the organ donation program. So we have large blood drives across the country that might be good tabling events for those other organizations. And think about it, the demographics of a blood donor and somebody else who might be considering to be an organ donor or a marrow donor, those people may have a lot of similar demographics. I mean, it's people who like to reach out in their community and help others. And even if you don't have a common mission with ViTalent where your members would be blood recipients or anything like that, you can still think about how you can network with your members to maybe host a blood drive for the community, because face it, that's what being nonprofit is all about. Most of us are very community-driven, we're very mission-driven, and we find opportunities for people to feel good about themselves by helping other people. And in the end, that's really what you do. You feel great because you've done something selfless for somebody else. You know, I love that you wove that through because that's something I think sometimes we lose sight of, especially when we talk so much about development and fundraising and it's the economics of it, we can lose sight of the human capital and the concept of philanthropy, really and truly what it does to us as beings. And I'm fascinated that you brought that up. I'm also really interested in your alignment to other nonprofit actions and missions. I think that's really, really smart. Let's explore that a little bit. I mean, how often is that going on where you do have other agencies that have some sort of tag into you, that you have them on site, and what is that looking like? Well, you know, we work with, you know, I can speak to Arizona most easily. In Arizona, we work with about 1,400 different organizations in a typical year in hosting blood drives. I mean, it's amazing what it takes. It takes 300 blood drives a month and seven donor centers doing operations every single day to bring in enough blood for patients. And so we work with all kinds of organizations. Yes, we work with businesses to have, you know, places for their employees to donate, but we work with churches, we work with nonprofits, we work with sports teams, we work with all sorts of different people. One of our favorite partnerships that we've had here in Arizona is working with the Phoenix Symphony. They're nonprofit too, but, you know, we did a program where we thanked blood donors with a voucher for a free ticket to a symphony performance in appreciation for giving blood. And that was all because their former maestro had been a blood, big blood recipient during his fight against aplastic anemia. And they related to the cause. But what was so good about it for that organization was that it opened up that nonprofit, in that case, the symphony, into a whole new set of potential fans. They get one ticket, and then that person goes and sees a concert. They fall in love with the symphony and they become permanent fans of the symphony. And through their mailing list, we also became exposed blood donation to the people who were symphony goers. So it's so wonderful to be able to find a way to introduce both organizations to a new demographic where people can expand what their interests and their dedication is all about. And it's worked very, very well. It's all about just developing relationships with people and trying to share some common goals. Well, and I hear an awful lot of creativity in there. I mean, I don't wanna say it was a risk, but that was a really creative thing to do and something that just would benefit everybody. I love that. Now, are you seeing there's kind of an interaction between participating and benefits and stuff like that? I mean, getting free swag or in the case of a cultural institution tickets and what does that look like? I would imagine people don't just volunteer because there's some sort of carrot at the end of the stick. I mean, they're not participating in a blood drive, but it just opens you up to more opportunity. But what are you seeing? Well, you know, in Arizona, we've been working in that vein for a very, very long time and we have some longstanding partnerships. And I know across the country with the local blood centers that once you develop that relationship, it can become an annual event. And where we really try to focus things is, you know, how can we make this a situation where it's a win-win for both the blood center and the nonprofit or the business that we're working with? And we tend to try to focus on the times of year when blood supplies are the leanest. And of course, anytime you're in a holiday week, which we've had holiday weeks almost every week of late, is when blood centers tend to struggle in bringing in blood donors. So that's when we try to look for partners to see how we can help each other, not only grow our number of people that are supporters, but find a nice way to thank blood donors, make people feel appreciative. And you know, what a lot of people don't stop and think about is that when you're nonprofit and you're doing something to promote the need for blood, it's generally something that's donated media. And we have opportunities for the media to come talk to interesting people. And it's a news story that blood supplies are lean. You know, that's important news that the public needs to know. And so it's something that helps everybody when you can partner with another organization, especially around difficult times of the year to maintain the blood supply. And you bring about awareness of the need for blood, the extraordinary need at that particular time, as well as help talk about how those two organizations are working together to be a solution to the problem, to make sure that patients aren't spending another holiday in the hospital. Right, okay, Sue, I love what you said. I love this concept. It's opened up some mental doors for me truly about working together and the collaboration effect. But let's get into some actual specifics. So let's say I'm a viewer of the nonprofit show. I'm like, okay, this is amazing. My nonprofit needs to do this. Where do we even begin? Like walk us through what the process might be. Well, it's really easy to set up a blood drive. It first involves just going to your local blood center and inquiring about hosting a blood drive. And at that point in time, the representative from the local blood center will provide all the necessary marketing materials, posters, all sort of the schedules, all of the materials to answer questions and sign up blood donors. People can have a blood drive either inside their building or they can find a public place where they can host a virtual blood drive. And we've seen a lot of that during COVID-19 where maybe there aren't people in the building but they've partnered with a local church or a mall to find a location that their members can go to to donate. It can be indoors through an indoor setup like in an empty conference room or community room or community center. Or it could be in a blood mobile where most blood centers have these buses that have the beds built right in where people can come in and donate in the parking lot with the blood mobile right there in the parking lot. As far as preparing the donors for giving blood, the process is determining eligibility and the blood center will provide all of the information to determine whether donors meet the general eligibility requirements. And then when a person actually comes to a blood drive, there's so many great benefits in it for the donor. The process takes about an hour, start to finish to give blood, but the first 15 minutes, you're getting a complimentary mini physical which is a great benefit. At Vitalat, you find out your blood type, your cholesterol reading, all sorts of things. You donate blood five to 10 minutes, have some snacks and you're on your way. I love it. So then that means that I'm assuming your information is going into the Vitalat system. And then when you come back or you reactivate, it's gonna be in there and it might go a little bit faster or is this the sort of thing that you can be building more repeat donors? Well, once a person is given blood one time to the blood center, they'll be in that blood center's database. And as repeat blood drives come up with that organization, we can generate past donor lists and we can send emails to donors and say, hey, the blood drive you gave it last time is having another drive. So yes, of course, once you've done one blood drive and you know who your regular donors are, it makes it even easier to sign people up the second and third and fourth time. And most organizations will host anywhere from two to four blood drives per year. It's something that is a regular program that you can set up at your organization and it's a great benefit. It increases morale. It makes people feel like they're doing something more than just their jobs or whatever. It's a way to have some great benefits for making it easy for your members to reach out into the community. So you just said three to four times a year. When you're working, let's say with a nonprofit and you're gonna come up with a package, if you will and using that word media package almost, would you say it's better to say, okay, we're gonna do this three times in 2022? Or I mean, what does that look like for you as somebody who's working in the communications and planning as well as the nonprofit who's trying to plan their communications out as well? Well, obviously, if you can figure out your blood drive schedule that you wanna do well in advance and get your dates on the books, you can easily communicate that to the people. So they're planning on it. They have it on their calendars. So we like to book our blood drives on a 12 month rolling cycle so that people kind of know when to anticipate their blood drives coming up. And it just makes it much easier for people to put together a program. Being involved with the blood program truly is a program. It's not just something, you know, one and done. It's something that we hope that people will ingrain it in something that they just do. The most dedicated blood donor is that person that, you know, that's what they do to give back is give blood two or three times a year to help patients. And it's a great way to make sure that the blood supply is always ample. You know, pardon me. You got me choked up here, Sue. I love the concept of making this alignment and putting it into your system and making it not a one and done thing. I think that's brilliant. I mean, it's really, really smart. I'm wondering if the average, if you know this off the top of your head, but the folks that you're working with, are they seeing this and the other nonprofits that, yeah, we need to, you know, be in this more than just once a year? I mean, are they receptive to that as well? Absolutely. Most of our organizations we work with, whether they're a nonprofit or a business or a church, most of them do a regular blood drive cycle where they pick the months that it works with, you know, their particular organization and it's scheduled well in advance. And it's a great program to have and most of our organizations do do that. And during this time of COVID, you know, a lot of people might say, well, I just don't know how to pull that off with, you know, we don't have people coming into the office. We don't have this or that. One of the things that we've started doing a lot of is what's called virtual blood drives. And that's where you can work with by talent or probably another blood center. I'm sure most blood centers do this sort of thing, but we establish a link that can be emailed to all of the members within that organization. And then as long as that donor pre-registers or makes their appointment through that link, then they can go to any blood drive or any donor center and it all gets credited back to that organization so that they know how many of their members gave blood. So, you know, maybe right now with the pandemic, if people aren't in a position to host something in their physical building, what they could do is establish a week. This is, you know, blood donation week for the members of our nonprofit. We encourage you to go to any donor center or blood drive, just pre-register here. And you can have a great community effort where people can go to the location that's closest to them. And the scheduling sites all have, you can go in, put in your city, your zip code on the scheduling site and it will tell you, okay, this donor center is down the street. This one's three blocks away. You can find locations and make appointments. So we don't, I mean, this time has blown by it. And I warned you, you would go fast. If you're doing, like say, a community event, I'm thinking like a walk or some, you know, big kind of community gathering, which will come back, is this sort of thing that you need to pre-schedule? I mean, I can't imagine that too many people are gonna go to an event and see that there's a blood drive and just be like, oh yeah, okay, I'll do that. I mean, it's more than, it's a pre-engagement almost, right? Am I correct on that? Absolutely, in fact, the most important thing that I can say leading into that is that blood has a shelf life. You can't wait for an emergency to donate. So first of all, you can't wait until someone you know is in the hospital because it takes 24 to 48 hours to test and process blood before it can even go to a hospital. And on top of that, blood has a shelf life anywhere from five days to one year, depending upon the component. So it takes constant planning to make sure, how else do we know that we've got enough blood for patients unless we've planned and we try to make sure in Arizona, the need is 600 donors a day. So we make sure that we have enough people scheduled to meet that 600 donors a day. And every region and state is going to be the same. They know traditionally what patients use. They know what they need and they work to schedule those donors in advance. And do we accept walk-ins? Yes, of course we do, it provided there's room. But in a perfect world, we would fill every appointment and make sure that we've got blood coming in on a consistent basis so that nothing expires and nobody gets denied a transfusion because it isn't there. Wow, this has been amazing. You've ticked so many boxes for us too. I mean, one of the things we talk about all the time on the nonprofit show is this need, this desire, the health of our nonprofit sector, what occurs when we collaborate? Absolutely. So it's been really, really great to start off the new year. You taught me a lot of things that I really didn't know and then illuminated some of the pieces that I think we should all know. And so here's Sue's information. Depending on where you are in this country and you need some help by talent, you're in 20, how many states? We're in 28 states, we're the nation's largest independent blood provider in the country. Yeah, so really an amazing thing to think about the health of your organization, the health of your neighbors and the health of society. Love, love, love. Sue kicking off the new year with this. This has been great, especially during a time when the medical situation globally is in the news. You have a lot of competition, don't you, for telling the story? We do, especially this time of year when there's lots of nonprofits that need assistance. But the one thing, if I have time to just mention before we close is that you have to stop and think about the patients that you're helping. And during this podcast, I've noticed that you have flashed Adalyn's picture on the screen a couple of times. And Adalyn is an Arizona six year old whose body does not make her own blood. And every three to four weeks, she has to go to the hospital to receive a blood transfusion or she will die. And she's six years old and she's already had 90, she'll have her 94th blood transfusion this month. And just stop and think about the people like Adalyn that you're helping. It's not just people in car accidents. It's all kinds of patients that need transfusions. And it just makes you feel so good to do something that money can't buy. It's giving love and giving life to people. Giving life, yeah. Well, this has been a remarkable, remarkable conversation, Sue. I'm so appreciative and we are here today really talking about something so integral to our communities because of the generosity and the gifts of our sponsors. So I wanna make sure that we mention all of them. Again, kicking off this new year the right way with something really an interesting, interesting conversation that I think sometimes is like kind of in the back of our head but really is a nonprofit leadership should be at the front of our mind. So, Sue, thank you so much. This has really been a joy and I so appreciate your talent and your dedication to our sector because communications where it's at, sister. Absolutely. Thank you for the opportunity. Have a wonderful new year and I hope we get to talk again soon. Absolutely. Hey everybody, as we always like to end every episode of the nonprofit, we wanna remind everyone to stay well so you can do well. We'll see you back here tomorrow, everyone.