The Motivations of Blood Donors*

In an effort to determine a key to recruiting the voluntary donor and to ascertain the conditions which dispose towards or inhibit the donation of blood, a study was initiated by the Irwin Memorial Blood Bank of the San Francisco Medical Society, a nonprofit community blood bank supplying blood needs of patients in 58 hospitals in an area encompassing a population of 1,200,000. A survey was conducted primarily by means of confidential questionnaires which were completed by 5,581 consecutive blood donors. The sampling included a cross‐section of the population from metropolitan, suburban and rural areas, 92 per cent of which were unpaid volunteers. This report discusses conclusions indicating differential motives and impedances applying to donors of different sexes, ages, income levels and educational achievements, and makes suggestions, based on these conclusions, of some practical steps toward motivating blood donations. Donors are mostly male, are younger than the general population, and are of somewhat higher socioeconomic status than the population at large. Most have had some previous experience as blood donors, express both humanitarian and personal motives for donating, and are relatively unconcerned about any painful aspects of it. They are not always thoroughly knowledgeable about details of blood banking practices, but generally have favorable impressions of them. Women seem more responsive to humanitarian appeals for donations than do men, while young people seem more susceptible to romantic or dramatic appeals for blood donors, and it is suggested that these differential characteristics be considered by blood banks when engaging in donor recruitment appeals.