You, Your Company And Your Customers Can Share The Gift Of Life

Yes you can. Its easy, painless and free.  When my mother-in-law passed away two weeks ago the family discussed organ donation and we all agreed we should offer whatever could be successfully transplanted.  Unfortunately, there were no viable organs in our 93 year-old mother. 

When I came back to my desk I did some research on organ donation in the US and then realized it would be a perfect blog topic and subsequently a great program for our industry.  Why your company, and why now?  Because it is a good thing to do, because you will save and/or improve the lives of people; your employees and customers will feel good about it and you can get some very good press in local papers, which always helps your business. 

Here’s how it works.  You encourage people to sign up.  That’s it.  No pressure, no long-lasting paperwork and no costs to you.  There are central clearing houses for all organ donation, based on patient’s need, available local matches and hospital facilities.  Go to organdonor.gov look up your state and sign up.  Your next driver’s license will carry a small logo indicating you are a donor.  All you need to do is tell your family, your friends, your physician and faith leader.  If you have a living will or medical directives, they should be ammended. 

Some 26 million people in the US have stages of kidney failure, millions have vision problems due to aging or diabetes.  You and your team can have impacts.  Ask for a volunteer in your company to lead this program.  All the information you need is on the web site organdonor.gov, a surprisingly easy to navigate government web site.  Each person who becomes a donor can impact as many as 8 different recipients.  Wow, that is powerful.  There is never any cost to the donor or the donor’s family.  After death is certified, the surgeries are carefully done so that open-casket funerals are enabled if that is your tradition.

Back to business, you can gain good community press if you announce the sign-up to local papers, have a radio station do an on-site broadcast and get people to come in and sign-up in your shop.  Or this can be very private with you and your employees.  Any way you want this to be.

Okay, you get the gist of this.  You can do good for strangers.  It doesn’t get better.