Lane Memorial Blood Bank is constantly searching for people who have never donated blood. The blood bank must find these donors to replace those who drop off the donor rolls for many different reasons. The ideal new donor is a person who is just starting out in his or her adult life and who will make blood donation a regular part of that life. The Lane County high schools are an obvious target for recruiting this particular group and LMBB has been conducting blood drives at these schools for many years. However, even though turnout at many schools increased dramatically when the minimum donating age was dropped to 16 (as permitted by Oregon state law), some other schools were producing meager results.

To encourage more student donations, LMBB developed its annual High School Blood Drive contest. This contest, along with more LMBB personnel involvement prior to and during the high school blood drives, has produced the desired results. Many of the schools now conduct full-day (5 or 6 hour) blood drives and several are scheduled to hold three events during the school year.

The schools are divided into three categories: small schools (2A), medium schools (3A) and large schools (4A) with plaques awarded to the winner in each category. In addition, the winning schools receive an invitation to send a representative to the blood bank's annual appreciation dinner to receive these awards.

In the school year 2003-04, 15 of Lane County's high schools participated in the contest. The blood bank's goal is to have 100% high school participation.

Download the High School Handbook (PDF format, file size: 3.3 MB) for additional information on organizing a high school blood drive.