Pleas donate if you are able. The only way for a person to receive lifesaving blood components is if someone generously give of themselves and shares their bounty of blood. It is only a pint, a small percentage of your total volume which is easily replaced, but lifesaving to someone in need!

Sometimes I wonder if Stanford would do the fair thing and charge people less for services at Stanford for donating blood. People donate blood and Stanford charges their patients very high medical fees for every little thing. So they are basically charging people for blood used in services yet want to get free blood in donations. Is what I am saying correct?

Sorry to say it, but that's the reality. I've donated for many years (with a maximally-usable type), in recent years at Stanford. Stanford made it increasingly challenging, botching willing donation opportunities: first via careless scheduling, then clumsy blood-drawing personnel (when you've donated a lot, more needle skill can be required to reduce cumulative vein scarring). Email about such issues to Stanford Blood Center's correct contact address went unanswered, until I escalated it to the medical director. Finally, Stanford disqualified my donation after a false-positive result for one of many disease screenings routinely performed on donated blood. Stanford acknowledged in writing that it was a false positive: they followed up with a more accurate second test on the same donated blood, which ruled out the disease flagged by the first test. I forwarded Stanford's information to my regular doctor (who knows I'm disease-free); he checked with an infectious-diseases expert colleague, who reported that the second test Stanford had performed is medically definitive: no physician would consider me a risky donor after that second test's result. So by external medical review, I'm a highly useful donor, but Stanford (with its "procedures" set evidently not by doctors but zealous lawyers) refuses my blood. They say I can "requalify" by a laborious process, which, combined with past experiences, offers an unencouraging uphill battle for what's fundamentally a favor to Stanford (beneficiary to the order $1000 financial value per whole-blood donation). A friend had arguably worse experience, being a very frequent (pheresis method) donor; reporting a badly botched donation episode that might have been taken as useful feedback to Stanford management, it produced instead a condescending denial-of-problem telephone call from a senior Blood Center physician -- which doesn't enhance Stanford's appeal, and is a dramatic enough story that it has some legs.

I gave a gallon of blood while in the Army. They paid
me 10 bucks per unit.

I gave another 5 gallons to the Red Cross of Northeast New York.
They didn't pay for it -- I didn't expect to be paid -- but I did
get time off from work to donate.

Moved to California, gave a unit of blood at Stanford. They charged
me $18 for the privilege. I felt like I'd been spat on, and have not
gone back. Didn't think even Stanford could be that snotty.

@Ex-donor
Were you doing an autologous donation (donating blood for your own use)? Because I've donated blood at Stanford Blood Center for years and have never been charged for donating.

@StanfordMedical
Legally, Stanford could pay blood donors cash. But then they'd have to label the blood products as having come from paid donors, and no one would want to use it.

Thanks to you all for your feedback. Stanford Blood Center, LLC (SBC) is a small, independent community blood center that provides blood products and testing services to several Bay Area hospitals, including Stanford Health Care and Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital Stanford, among others. We are exceptionally grateful to all of our donors for their generous gift of blood donation.

To be clear: we do not now, nor have we ever charged money for blood donation — with the exception of autologous (or “self-directed”) donations, which require a specialized process for collection and storage. We rely entirely on a volunteer (unpaid) donor base, which is widely considered in the blood banking industry to be a safer and more sustainable solution (Web Link for maintaining the community's blood supply. We do offer thank-you rewards to our donors in appreciation for their time and altruistic gift.

Our Collections staff are highly regarded in our organization and beloved by our donors for their professionalism, warmth and attention to the donor experience. This is a point of pride for the Blood Center. If you have had a negative donation experience, we would love the opportunity to correct any poor perception you may have of SBC, our staff, or our commitment to our donors. Please reach out to us at sbcsupport@stanford.edu or 650-736-7786, so we can connect you to the appropriate person to help.

Remember: less than 10% of people who can donate blood actually do. Local patients count on all of the help we can give them. We hope you’ll continue to provide lifesaving blood products to those in need. We greatly appreciate your service to our community!

In response to Darin and the SBC staffer, the donation in question was NOT autologous. I was charged $18 for routine lab work which is done on every donation. Only Stanford charged for this -- and apparently only charged the
occasional sucker. To say that they did not charge for donating but only for lab work would be splitting hairs. The cost of processing can be and should be passed on to the recipient or the recipient's insurer. Which is not to say it isn't, even if it has already been passed on to the donor.