NASA Wins Stanford Blood Center’s 2010 ‘Donor Cup’

March 7, 2011
Attention News Desk: Press Release (for immediate release)
MEDIA CONTACT:
Brooke Wilson (650) 723-8270
brookewilson@stanford.edu

STANFORD, Calif. — NASA took top honors in the 2010 “Donor Cup” — a friendly competition sponsored by the Stanford Blood Center in which local tech companies rolled up their sleeves to out-give their competitors. Rounding out the top five were SLAC, NVIDIA, Cisco and Brocade.

Donor Cup blood drives, hosted by 27 different tech-based organizations in the Bay Area throughout last year, were ranked and evaluated in several categories, including most units collected, highest percentage of first-time donors and percentage of company participation. Clayton Toller, a donor recruiter for the blood center with a penchant for sports statistics, used NASCAR-style ranking to determine the winners of the competition.

“To even be eligible to compete in Donor Cup, companies had to host at least four blood drives in 2010,” Toller said. “That alone makes each of the 27 participants already a big contributor to the local blood supply.”

Representatives from each participating company were invited to Stanford Blood Center’s flagship location on Hillview Avenue in Palo Alto on March 4 for the awards presentation, tours of the laboratories and breakfast. In addition to the top five winners, Google took home the award for most first-time donors; Lockheed Martin had the most repeat donors; and TiVo had the highest percentage of company participation.

“The Donor Cup competition helped us collect 8.5 percent more blood at these blood drives than we collected from the same companies in the previous year,” said director of donor services Harpreet Sandhu. “We will definitely consider other ways to harness that friendly, competitive spirit in the future.”

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The Stanford University School of Medicine consistently ranks among the nation’s top medical schools, integrating research, medical education, patient care and community service. For more news about the school, please visit http://mednews.stanford.edu. The medical school is part of Stanford Medicine, which includes Stanford Hospital & Clinics and Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital. For information about all three, please visithttp://stanfordmedicine.org/about/news.html.

Stanford Blood Center was created at the Stanford University School of Medicine in 1978 to meet the complex transfusion needs of Stanford Hospital & Clinics and Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital, as well as provide tailored blood products and clinical trial services for school researchers. Today the center provides blood products to eight local hospitals and is a recognized leader in the field of transfusion medicine. More information is available at https://bloodcenter-stg.stanford.edu.