College of Business Administration

GROUP MEMBERS:

Estrada
Ha
Paschke

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY:

The San Diego Blood Bank supplies blood to 44 hospitals in San Diego, Orange County and Los Angeles on a daily basis. In order to meet the demand of these hospitals the Blood Bank needs at least 400 pints of blood per day. The holidays are an especially critical time of year for the Blood Bank, because demand is higher and supply is lower. A few reasons for the higher demand include the increase in the number of elective surgeries that are scheduled and the increase in the number of traffic-related accidents and attempted suicides. On the other hand, supply is lower because people become so busy with their holiday plans that they forget to make time to donate blood. Therefore, we decided to sponsor a blood drive on campus because we felt that it would help to remind people that the spirit of the season is giving.

Once this decision was made we contacted Marno Miller, a Donor Recruitment Associate at the San Diego Blood Bank, to set up a date and time. We agreed on Thursday, November 2, from 9am -2pm in Casa Real. The Blood Bank would supply all of the promotional fliers and posters, as well as free t-shirts for all the donors. Our responsibility was to get businesses to sponsor the drive and find ways to get the word out about it on campus. We knew that getting people to take time out of their busy schedules to donate blood would not be easy, so we decided the best approach would be to appeal to their Psychological Egoism (translation: give them free stuff and they will come).

We began contacting businesses such as Jack in the Box, Papa John's Pizza, La Salsa Mexican restaurant, Pizza Hut, Quizno's, Hollywood Video, Blockbuster Video, the San Diego Gulls, and AMC Theaters, to see if they would be willing to donate some incentive items. In exchange we offered to feature their company logo on all the posters and fliers, and mention their company name in any TV or radio announcements that we ran. Most of the businesses declined, stating that they were already involved with other charities or that it wasn't in their budget. However, La Salsa responded immediately with 100 $5 gift certificates, and Papa John's donated 15 large pizzas for us to serve at the blood drive. We were able to get KyXy-FM 96.5 to run a PSA the week of the drive, and The Daily Aztec mentioned it in the "Campus Calendar" on the day of the event. In addition, Dean Wilbur of the College of Business agreed to help by putting fliers in the mailboxes of all the faculty and staff and posting sign-up sheets in the Business Dept. office and the Business Advising office. Furthermore, Niki Gee, the Residence Hall Coordinator helped us by posting fliers in all the resident's halls. The Health Services Department also agreed to be present at the blood drive to distribute brochures on HIV, AIDS, and Hepatitis at the event. In total we distributed approximately 800 fliers to promote our blood drive.

On the day of the blood drive we arrived at Casa Real at 8am to help the Blood Bank set up. This included setting up tables and chairs, getting the donuts and coffee ready, and putting up banners and balloons to let people know where we were located. At 9am donors began to arrive and we hit the campus to pass out more fliers. By the end of the day we had helped the Blood Bank to collect 54 pints of blood from 69 possible donors. We learned from several people that this was their first time ever donating blood and were very proud that they chose this time to do it. According to Marno Miller we had a very good turn out. In a "Thank You" note that we received from her she informed us that some of the blood we collected had already been used to help save or sustain the lives of many people.

There are several moral and ethical frameworks that we considered when choosing to do a blood drive. The first is the Social Contract Theory which says that a moral person will donate blood because it is mutually beneficial to him and the society that he lives in, and other people in that society agree to do the same. Deontology states that a moral person will donate blood simply because it is the right thing to do. According to Utilitarianism a moral person will donate because her blood will benefit three people as opposed to the one person that she will benefit by not donating-herself. Psychological Egoism is the theory that a person will donate blood, not because it is the right thing to do, but because there is something in it for them (free food and a T-shirt). On the other hand, Ethical Egoism holds that it is in the best interest of a person to donate blood because she may need that blood some day herself. Finally, Virtue Theory suggests that a person would give blood because doing so is the act of a generous person; that person is generous, therefore that person should give blood. The Ethic of Care may also apply if a person is asked to donate blood on behalf of someone they care about. In this case the person would donate the blood simply because there is caring relationship between himself and the recipient.