Purdue quits IU blood donor challenge

Since 1997, IU and Purdue University have had a competition that isn’t about sports or academics, but about giving.

The IU-Purdue Blood Donor Challenge has produced more than 58,000 donations in its 12 years. This year the drive is called the IU Blood Donor Challenge.

“In the past, the Purdue Alumni Association took part in the blood donor challenge by asking our clubs to hold blood drives in their local communities,” Martha Burns, senior director of Alumni Activities for the Purdue Alumni Association, said in an e-mail. “We never had a budget for participation in the blood donor challenge – we simply found time to work on it along with our other club programs. We did not work with student groups on campus blood drives.”

The Purdue Alumni Association is not a department of the university. Burns said that two years ago the association went through a branding process and made a new brand promise and brand values.

She said they no longer think the IU-Purdue Blood Donor Challenge fits into the promise. 

Instead, two blood drives have occurred on the Purdue campus in 2009 and another is scheduled for January 2010. 

This year, IU has decided to keep up the event and make it nationwide.

For individuals to participate, all they need to do is to donate at a participating blood agency in their area between Oct. 1 and Nov. 13. and say they are giving for the IU Blood Donor Challenge.

Last year 8,544 people gave blood in the challenge. Without the rivalry between schools, IU is still trying to raise 5,000 units of blood in the seven weeks the event is taking place.

So far there have been more than 2,000 donations reported. Since there are about 42,000 students at IU, 5,000 donations would require only about 12
percent of the student population.

“We have looked at challenging another school, but we decided to just pick a goal number and shoot for it instead,” Director of Alumni Programs Jennifer Gentry said. “There’s no beef against Butler.”