ideas • blood drive success
publicity / recruitment / recognition

publicity ideas

Publicity for your blood drive can make all the difference in the world! Although the Blood Bank of Alaska can provide you with an assortment of publicity and promotional materials, the best publicity involves people. Here’s a brief listing of ideas to help you get started on a campaign to make your blood drive a success:

• Create competition among groups or classes such as seniors vs juniors or challenging the rival school.
• Involve as many classes as possible - art class can do posters, speech class can make presentations on giving blood, drama class can do a skit for meetings and assemblies, etc.
• Notify yearbook staff - build pride in your blood drive for years to come.
• Place windshield notices on cars in the school parking lot.
• Make daily or weekly PA announcements.
• Ask teachers to announce the blood drive and encourage donations.
• Get the school newspaper involved and help them with story ideas.
• Handout nutritional snacks at sign-up tables.
• Use E-mail or promote it on your school internet website.
• Show Blood Bank of Alaska videos such as My Blood, Your Blood or commercials on your school television channel or in class with permission from your teacher.

recruitment ideas

Recruitment is different than publicity - it involves actively ASKING potential donors and SIGNING them up to give blood. Signing-up commits the donor and helps them understand that they are needed!

• Bring a friend - ask each donor to bring a friend to sign-up and donate together.
• Sign-up donors by setting up a table in the hallway before school, at lunchtime, or at other school events.
• Hold an assembly for Juniors and Seniors the week before the blood drive. Ask a Blood Bank of Alaska Community Coordinator to be a guest and speak about the importance of donating blood.
• Take the sign-ups you need and divide by the number of committee members and assign a specific number of slots to each person on the committee to fill. The winner gets a reward.
• Take a sign-up sheet to class with you and ask permission to make an announcement about the blood drive and pass around the sign-up sheet.

recognition ideas

Most everybody enjoys being recognized for their efforts. There are many ways to recognize the donors who register to donate at your blood drive:

• Follow-up story in the school newspaper about the blood drive with student interviews.
• Dedicated page in the school yearbook with photos.
• A banner put on display with signatures of everyone who donated blood at your drive.
• Thank you letter or announcement by the school principal.
• Statewide recognition for your high school blood drive achievements, provided by the Blood Bank of Alaska.