Frequently Asked Questions
Why don't you ask my full name?
Why don't you ask my gender?
Why do you ask my blood type?
Why do you ask my email? What will you use it for?
What can I do to help?
How are the statistics calculated?
What if I have more questions?
Why don't you ask my full name?
Pledging your support effectively amounts to admitting sexual activity and we do not wish to invade anyone's privacy by taking their full name. We also have little use for a full number for the purposes of this website. We do ask for a first name and last initial for some identifying information about your pledge to donate.
Why don't you ask my gender?
Sure we can likely deduce your gender from the name you provide but the point of not asking is because there are a number of people who don't identify with a specific gender. There are people among the LGBT community who have changed genders or just don't conform to gender standards but are still disqualified by the present blood donation policies.
Why do you ask my blood type?
Presently we only ask for this information for the sake of posterity. Once we have a substantial number of people who have pledged to donate we can provide statistics about the blood types that have been pledged. As you know there are specific blood types that in much higher demand than others. Some people are capable of being universal donors which is greatly helpful and others have some of the more rare blood types.
Why do you ask my email? What will you use it for?
The reason we ask for your email address is so that we have a unique identifier for you. We are trying to deter people from signing up more than once because this will skew our statistics. There are other measures put in place in order to deter this as well. Please only sign up once and if you want to get those numbers higher then the best thing to do is share this page with others!
What can I do to help?
The best way for you to help is to spread the word about this issue and share this website!
How are the statistics calculated?
The above statistics that are on most every page of the website are quite easily calculated.
We take the total number of people who have pledged to donate and multiply it first by
the number of units of blood a single person can donate in a year. According to
Canadian Blood Services / Héma Québec one person can donate up to 7 units
of blood in one year.1 This gives us our total number of units that we can
possibly generate in one year. Canadian Blood Services / Héma Québec also
says that one unit of blood can save up to 3 lives so we multiply our previous answer
by three to get the number of lives we could potentially save.1
1. http://www.blood.ca/CentreApps/Internet/UW_V502_MainEngine.nsf/page/Are_you_bloody_smart?OpenDocument
What if I have more questions?
If you have more questions that aren't answered here please feel free to drop us a line at contactus@bloodisblood.ca.