{"id":2978,"date":"2011-12-23T16:24:13","date_gmt":"2011-12-23T23:24:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dragonflyeffect.com\/blog\/?p=2978"},"modified":"2011-12-26T12:41:21","modified_gmt":"2011-12-26T19:41:21","slug":"lessons-from-cancer-harnessing-the-collective-power-of-small-acts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dragonflyeffect.com\/blog\/lessons-from-cancer-harnessing-the-collective-power-of-small-acts\/","title":{"rendered":"Lessons from Cancer: Harnessing the Collective Power of Small Acts"},"content":{"rendered":"

The following is adapted from a speech given by\u00a0Vineet Singal<\/a>, leader and advocate for 100KCheeks<\/a>, at the 2011 INK Conference.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Team<\/a>
The 100KCheeks Team<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Many of you know the story of Amit Gupta<\/a>, a 32 year old entrepreneur that was recently diagnosed with Leukemia. \u00a0Under the guidance of Stanford Professor Jennifer Aaker (co-author of The Dragonfly Effect<\/em>), I have had the privilege of heading an organization aimed at helping people like Amit; people in need of a bone marrow transplantation. We are a team of 12 inexperienced but infectiously enthusiastic and passionate college students at Stanford. Our goal: bank 100,000 people into the bone marrow registry in one year. \u00a0We call ourselves One Hundred Thousand Cheeks (100KCheeks).<\/p>\n

About two months ago,100K Cheeks began helping Amit to register more South Asians in the United States and India. \u00a0This was not only a call to arms to uncover a match for Amit, but also to help increase the odds of other South Asians in need of a bone marrow transplant. \u00a0The current odds for people of South Asian descent of finding a compatible bone marrow donor are 1 in 20,000.<\/p>\n

Through almost a year of trying to make headway on increasing these odds, we discovered something really critical: the immense power of a personal story. \u00a0We realized that people were not as motivated by the need of thousands, but rather the story of one. \u00a0Our logic was simple. \u00a0In focusing on helping to amplify the efforts of individual patients looking for a match, we would in turn be helping others.<\/p>\n

As a group, 100KCheeks was able to help add tens of thousands of new donors to the US national registry by working with individual patients and their families. Retrospectively, we questioned: what separated campaigns that were successful? What truly distinguished them? What made people look and what made them take action? From our work, we learned three important lessons.<\/p>\n

ONE: Cultivate Optimism<\/strong><\/p>\n

Cancer is a word that elicits so many emotions and thoughts; most of them negative. Yet we know it is hope that truly motivates people to act. \u00a0This is a problem that many campaigns face: how to move people into action when the issue at hand can be so depressing? \u00a0We decided to build a campaign that revolved around fun, hopefulness, and humor. \u00a0For Amit\u2019s campaign, that wasn\u2019t hard because those attributes are a part of who Amit is (here is a picture to prove it). Emphasizing humor over tragedy, empathy over pity, hope over guilt was extremely important in creating a successful campaign.<\/p>\n

TWO: Design to Enable Action<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/strong>As a group, we realized that it was important to spell out to people how they can help, while also making it easy for them to do so. While signing up to be a donor was simple, running a drive was a little more complicated. We got so many requests from people who wanted to run a bone marrow drive but simply didn\u2019t know how or where to start. Nicole and Siddhanth, two members of the 100KCheeks team, created a website called Drive in a Box<\/a><\/em>. \u00a0This platform was essentially a simple instructional manual for running an Amit-specific bone marrow drive, involving 6 easy steps: Step 1 Find a place; Step 2 Recruit some volunteers; Step 3 Advertise and so on. For each step it provided resources, cut and paste letters to send out to potential donors, and tips on how to run an effective drive. We wanted to make it is as easy as possible for people to run a drive, to make a difference. We launched the site in a week, and within a day over 30 people around the country were using it to run bone marrow drives. \u00a0Simplicity was key in moving people to act.<\/p>\n

THREE: Harness Networks<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/strong>After implementing the first two steps, we focused on harnessing social networks and media outlets to spread the word. By pushing Amit\u2019s story through the Social Media stratosphere, hashtags #ISwabbedforAmit<\/a> and #4Amit<\/a> achieved 100,000,000 impressions on Twitter, and a video describing Amit\u2019s story had over 200,000 views on YouTube.<\/p>\n

Through perseverance and the power of the individual story, we were also able to connect with Traditional Media outlets; Amit\u2019s story was covered by Sanjay Gupta<\/a>, NBC<\/a>, The Huffington Post<\/a>, just to name a few.<\/p>\n

Through persistent optimism, designing for others, and harnessing networks, over 1200 people signed up to conduct drives. Be the Match, the largest bone marrow registry in the US, told us \u201cthey had never seen anything like it\u201d, and had to hire extra staff in order to accommodate the flux of incoming registrants. \u00a0Online registrations for marrow donors in the US tripled; over 20,000 people requested a cheek swab kit for Amit, and over 40,000 people worldwide were registered. \u00a0Through this effort, we completed our goal of swabbing 100,000 cheeks\u2026it was incredible.<\/p>\n

And what is Amit\u2019s status? The truth is that as of today Amit is still searching for a match. \u00a0But, those 40,000+ people who registered for him are already helping others. \u00a0Furthermore, Amit still has a chance, and he needs your help. \u00a0I ask you to be a part of his search and register as a donor by visiting the Be the Match<\/a> website.<\/p>\n

There are patients who need a match that contact 100KCheeks every week. \u00a0As a group, we have therefore asked ourselves how could we revolutionize the process of finding a bone marrow donor? \u00a0We wanted to make everything we did for Amit possible for any patient. \u00a0Using the three design principles mentioned earlier, we are on our way to achieving this goal in the form of a website, The Marrow Tree<\/a>, that will launch on New Years Day 2012. We also invite you to visit the site and sign up on our mailing list<\/a>.<\/p>\n

This year, our goal for 100KCheeks is to register a million people, and we need your help to accomplish this. \u00a0Help us recruit them. Let Amit\u2019s story be our guiding light. \u00a0Let his story be our call to action. \u00a0Let his story be a strong affirmation of our belief that we, on our own, can truly save lives and change the world.<\/p>\n

All it takes is a simple cheek swab<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The following is adapted from a speech given by\u00a0Vineet Singal, leader and advocate for 100KCheeks, at the 2011 INK Conference. Many of you know the story of Amit Gupta, a 32 year old entrepreneur that was recently diagnosed with Leukemia. \u00a0Under the guidance of Stanford Professor Jennifer Aaker (co-author of The Dragonfly Effect), I have … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Lessons from Cancer: Harnessing the Collective Power of Small Acts”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[134,31,10,120],"tags":[241,216,242,240,244,243],"class_list":["post-2978","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-case-studies","category-nonprofit","category-storytelling","category-take-action","tag-100kcheeks","tag-amit","tag-ink2010","tag-iswabbedforamit","tag-marrowtree","tag-vineet"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2BBCq-M2","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dragonflyeffect.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2978","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dragonflyeffect.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dragonflyeffect.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dragonflyeffect.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dragonflyeffect.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2978"}],"version-history":[{"count":19,"href":"https:\/\/dragonflyeffect.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2978\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2996,"href":"https:\/\/dragonflyeffect.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2978\/revisions\/2996"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dragonflyeffect.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2978"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dragonflyeffect.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2978"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dragonflyeffect.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2978"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}