Quote Originally Posted by wiggin View Post
I consider it charity, and of the free and lifesaving variety. But you could be, you know, a selfish dick, and then you'd be right. I'm obviously not going to convince you, but I was assuming that most of the forum members here were rather more public spirited than yourself.
Good luck with that. The thing about these public-pressure campaigns to increase blood donation (etc), is that they're only effective at all while they're going on. Once the pressure's off, people return to their old habits and the path of least resistance. To overcome that, you need to somehow integrate the desired behavior with a new or existing habit, or incintivize the behavior.

And for what it's worth, people looking for charitable donations usually do everything they can to make donation easier and remove barriers to donation, the absence of which in donating blood is probably a big factor in why only 3% of people donate on even an occasional basis in this country. Convincing people to get grilled on their sex life and then stabbed for no compensation is a hard enough sell without adding in the need to drive somewhere and work around the Red Cross' schedule for the privilege.