Why does the Red Cross sell blood and blood products that are given freely by donors?
The American Red Cross is a nonprofit organization that supplies almost half of the nation’s blood supply by working with more than 4 million donors and 3,000 hospitals. We rely on the generous gifts volunteer blood donors provide us. In order for the Red Cross to make that gift available to patients in need, we must collect, store, test and process the blood. There are significant costs associated with each of these processes, and in order for us to continue making one person’s donation available to someone else who needs it, we must charge for the testing and processing of the blood to recoup these costs.
