The spring Stanford Blood Drive, hosted by the school’s National Honor Society (NHS) on May 20, 2025, had the highest turnout NHS has seen in the drive’s history, NHS President and senior Ashton Chen said.
They received 120 live units of blood and four double red cell donations, which are able to help 368 patients total, compared to the previous drive’s 249 patients on Oct. 24, 2024, Chen said. The drive reached maximum capacity even though there were roughly 50 more people scheduled to walk in, Chen said.
“Even though we did stop at 1 pm, and basically didn’t get a third of our donors, we still managed to exceed our goal from last time and break our records from previous years,” Chen said.
The Stanford Blood Drive is an event where the school’s NHS communicates with the Stanford Blood Center to coordinate a school-wide blood drive, Chen said. The spring drive is their 29th drive on record so far, and the school’s NHS has been doing it for the past 20 years, Chen said.
“We do it (blood drive) two times a year,” Chen said. “In previous years, it used to be once, but now we do it two times a year, because legally, the same person can only donate after six months. So, we decided to do two drives to maximize the amount of lives we can save.”
This year, Stanford started a program to give graduating seniors who donate a red honor cord from the Stanford Blood Center, Chen said.
“On top of that, you get a $15 gift card and your attendance is cleared while you’re still donating,” Chen said. “If you donate plasma, you receive a t-shirt.”
NHS takes care of the physical facilities for the drive, Chen said.
“We collect the donors, we get sign-ups, we publicize, and we deal with paperwork with the school administration to make sure that our event is both safe and allowed to happen on campus,” Chen said.
In addition to this year, senior Jody Pan donated for the Stanford Blood Drive the previous year, since he heard there were rewards and donating meant he could skip a couple of class periods, Pan said.
“I originally wanted to donate plasma, but I did not meet the requirement, and a whole bunch of people didn’t meet the requirement,” Pan said. “When you’re donating blood, the minimum requirement is basically if you’re up to weight.”
Junior Breanna Onyegegbu chose to donate because she isn’t squeamish around needles and figured there was no reason not to donate, Onyegegbu said.
“I haven’t donated blood before, but I got my blood drawn a couple of years ago,” Onyegegbu said.
Being an organizer for the blood drive allows him to host an event where there is a culture of giving and community, along with being able to save other people even without meeting them, Chen said.
“It’s the idea of being able to be a part of something bigger actually impact people, even though I don’t directly see it (and) knowing that my actions and what other people are doing translates to lives being saved, whether that’s in cancer research or hospital transfusions or patients with leukemia,” Chen said.