On November 5, 2015, Gift of Life was named the grand prize winner in the World Marrow Donor Day celebration contest. CEO/Founder Jay Feinberg and CFO/COO Gregg Francis accepted the honor in Minneapolis, MN, at the World Marrow Donor Association (WMDA) Fall Meeting.

 

For winning the prize, Gift of Life will be given the opportunity to present at the 11th International Donor Registry Conference (IDRC) and WMDA Working Group meetings. The conference will be held in Singapore on May 30–June 2, 2016 at the Grand Copthorne Waterfront Hotel.

 

September 19, 2015, marked the first-ever celebration of World Marrow Donor Day (WMDD), an international holiday created by WMDA. WMDD will be held annually on the third Saturday of September. Its purpose is to honor all volunteer, unrelated blood stem cell, marrow, and cord blood unit donors around the world. This year’s theme was to celebrate the achievement of 25 million donors worldwide being listed as potential donors.

 

Gift of Life’s winning campaign was “50 States, 1 Mission.” Through the organization's Campus Ambassador Program (CAP), a national effort was launched to run one donor recruitment drive in every state. In addition to organizing WMDD drives, Gift of Life incorporated a heavy social media and photography component to get the word out about the holiday and the organization’s activities. Gift of Life used WMDD as an opportunity to educate thousands of potential donors on how easy it can be to save a life through peripheral blood stem cell and bone marrow donation. Campus ambassadors and Gift of Life volunteers ran 97 donor recruitment drives and collected 4,000 cheek swab kits from around the country. 

 

CAP was created in 2014 to give Gift of Life a foothold on college campuses across the country. Ambassadors are centrally placed to recruit healthy donors between the ages of 18 and 25, educating them about registration guidelines as well as the donation process.