One Year and 100 Thousand Cheeks


Bone Marrow Registry Drive Sign for 100KCheeksThe Following guest post is written by Vineet Singal, Stanford student and leader of 100KCheeks as we observe 100KCheeks’s first birthday and their significant accomplishments.

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During my time with 100KCheeks, I have had the privilege to work with many creative, inspiring, and extremely helpful individuals, groups, and organizations. With the support from the Dragonfly community’s network of partners, 100KCheeks has helped register 115,158 new potential bone marrow donors — 10,387 (9%) through direct action.

Along this road of registration, 100KCheeks has benefited from guidance and influence from amazing sources.

Patient-centered campaigns such as Cure Sonia and Amit Gupta Needs You provided us with the honor and privilege to run on-the-ground drives and social media campaigns on their behalf. Some people we supported are no longer with us, while others are on their way to full recovery.  All of their stories and their efforts have combined to inspire thousands to join a movement that will ultimately save many lives. We owe so much to these brave people. Their collective spirit and attitude provide constant motivation to keep us pushing forward in the quest for more bone marrow donor registrants.

The OpenIDEO team has been our beacon of ingenuity and inspiration. 100KCheeks was able to conduct a two month long campaign on OpenIDEO, and got people worldwide to help get contribute ideas and solutions to the problem of “How might we increase the number of bone marrow donors to help save more lives?”

In addition to to everything that we learned from the challenge participants, the entire OpenIDEO team contributed incredibly from a design perspective. In fact, since completing this challenge, we have been hard at work implementing many of the insights garnered from the campaign to work with national bone marrow registries in an effort to create powerful online tools. These platforms will enable the bone marrow registries to be even more effective at registering more individuals and saving more lives.

I invite you to read the piece the OpenIDEO leaders wrote about this milestone.

We still have so much work to do, but we look forward to collaborating with more inspiring, innovative, and enthusiastic people, groups, and organizations to help people who need life-saving bone marrow transplants. Thank you for rooting for us and for your continued support.