HOW TO Improve Blood Donor Recruitment

More blood on your shelves is always needed.

• Internal recognition/compensation…

If you are not tracking where a donor comes from, how do you know who to recognize and/or compensate for the unit(s)?  By tracking your recruitment efforts, you can properly incent and reward those who are truly responsible for bringing donors in the door.  This will also allow you to maximize the impact of your best resources and potentially reallocate those that might be under-performing.

• How did we do that?

Ever wonder why you had a really good or even a not-so-good month?  By tracking your donor recruitment efforts, you will be able to more effectively determine that answer every time.  This way you can focus more on what is working and less on what is not.

• We’re collecting enough overall, but not enough of the right products…

Tracking your recruitment efforts allows you to see the key portions of your strategy that can be enhanced to increase units where and when they are needed most.  Instead of focusing on getting donors in the door, you can now focus on getting them in the right seat.

• WOW!  This seems like a lot of work.  How do I get started?

The first step is to look at who is responsible for donor recruitment and how they recruit donors.  Are they making phone calls?  Are they sending emails or postcards?  Are they possibly going door to door or standing outside each drive to bring in new donors?

I want to keep this post brief, just providing you all with something to begin thinking about before my next update.  You are going to begin seeing these types of posts from me about every two weeks, so check back often or just subscribe to our blog feed (where you’ll be automatically notified each time a new blog post is published).  In my next post, I will go into more detail on how to effectively track your recruitment efforts.