Why does DKMS ask for money?
As an international organisation fighting against blood cancer, our mission is to give as many people as possible a second chance at life. To do that, we need to raise funds – especially because it costs us R800 to register each new donor.
As an international organisation fighting against blood cancer, our mission is to give as many people as possible a second chance at life. To do that, we need to raise funds – especially because it costs us R800 to register each new donor.
We receive our funding from two different sources: the first is through money donated charitably from people and companies, which we use predominantly to cover the costs of registering new donors. The second is from the various healthcare systems that use our services, for example when a donor is successfully matched with a patient and goes on to donate, the healthcare provider covers all of the costs associated to the procedure.
DKMS is a nonprofit organisation. This means that, unlike ordinary businesses, the money we raise goes straight into supporting social or scientific causes. Monetary donations allow us to register new blood stem cell donors, which in turn allows us to give even more people around the world a second chance at life. R800 is enough for us to find, register, and type one new blood stem cell donor in our lab, but this cost is not covered by any healthcare provider. We also have to cover the cost of regularly updating the details of our donors so that we can find them they are needed. In the search for a match for a patient, every minute really does count.
DKMS supports and funds blood cancer research. We also undertake our own, focusing on improving the outcome of transplants, and so the lives of those receiving blood stem cell donations. We constantly optimise the typing quality of our registered donors so that we are able to achieve more accurate patient-donor matches and increase the number of second chances at life. We are also taking our mission around the world, setting up in a number of countries, so that we can continue to grow and diversify the database. We’re doing this because we believe that anyone around the world should be able to find a donor should they need a blood stem cell transplant, regardless of where they live or their ethnic background.
