DELTA and American Red Cross Technology Partnership Shines When Handling Donors
On October 15-16, 2003, more than 3,500 MU students and 1,500 local Mid-Missourians rolled up their sleeves at the Hearnes Center in Columbia, MO for the University of Missouri Homecoming 2003 Blood Drive.
Delta Systems Group and the American Red Cross continued their technology partnership to track and process every one of those 5000+ donors throughout the donor cycle.
In April 1997, Delta Systems Group was called in to help the Red Cross manage their large-scale Blood Drives during Homecoming and Greek Week.
DELTA designed a check-in database application that allows Mizzou student associations to schedule their members’ donation times using the Web site DELTA created, donateblood.com, so each student organization liaison could register their members from anywhere at anytime.
The system also allows organizers to ensure that a continual stream of donors is being processed throughout the event by alerting coordinators when too many people have registered for the same time slot.
In addition to reducing wait time, the system monitors the flow of donors in real time during the drive, showing administrators hour-by-hour breakdowns of the number of donors checked through the donation center. After the blood drive, detailed reports are provided to the student organizations and committees showing exactly how many donors arrived for their appointments on time and how long it took each student to donate.
This blood drive was even better equipped to handle the onslaught of donors thanks to the addition of several reporting features new to the custom database system built by Delta Systems Group for the Red Cross.
Drive organizers were able to spot appointment trends while they were still staffing and were able to ramp up scheduling at the exact peak hours donors were expected.
1,425 walk-in donors from the community were provided with a dedicated check-in position and were fast-tracked through the system. This allowed their average donation time to hover around 60 minutes.
4,027 Students were pre-registered. 3,594 students showed up to donate blood. Of those 3,594 students, 93% of them arrived on time and averaged a mere one hour and fifteen minutes from check in to check out. This includes taking a break to recover and enjoy a free meal or snack.