Since the conclusion of the Bone Marrow Donation Challenge on OpenIDEO, the 100K Cheeks student team has been hard at work incorporating the amazing ideas generated by the OpenIDEO community into our on-the-ground work to register more bone marrow donors.

We have developed two projects to focus on first, which we call the “Social Change in a Box” and the “Marrow Tree”.

The Social Change in a Box idea was inspired by Sina Mossayeb’s concept of developing a website with DIY resources, such as informational materials, promo files, and more. The goal of this website is to design for network effects – we want to create something that is easily sharable, understandable, and adaptable to many situations. The Social Change in a Box will include template emails for students, employees, family members and others who want to host a drive, attend a drive, or spread the word about the importance of joining the registry. It will also include material to be shared via social media, including pre-written tweets, Facebook posts, short videos and more. Several 100K Cheeks team members are focusing on this initiative, which is scheduled to launch soon!

Other students from 100K Cheeks are working on the Marrow Tree, another website that drew inspiration from several winning OpenIDEO concepts, including “BeTheInternationalMatch.org” by Arjan Tupan and “Matchpoint" by Carola Ponce. The website will feature a visualization of a tree, which illustrates all the people who have joined the registry as well as the people who recruited them. Our goal is to create a visual manifestation of these relationships, keep track of how many people have indirectly registered, and eventually, how many lives they have saved through simply spreading the word – this is what will keep people coming back to the cause to increase donor retention. The site will eventually occupy marrowtree.org but is not quite yet live!

OpenIDEO continues to influence our thinking and our implementation of these amazing projects. For example, Carola Ponce, who submitted the original OpenIDEO winning concept of “Matchpoint”, has been working closely with the Marrow Tree team on the site, much to our delight and good fortune. 

If you or someone you know is interested in helping 100K Cheeks or contributing to a project, please let us know by checking us out on Facebook and clicking "Join our Team". We are always looking for new ideas and inspired individuals!