Goodwill of O.C. wants visitors to consider donations that go beyond clothing

Goodwill of Orange County has teamed up with nonprofit Donate Life California to give shoppers an opportunity to register as organ, eye and tissue donors throughout April for National Organ Donation Month.

There are more than 100,000 people currently waiting for a lifesaving transplant, and more than 22,000 of them live in California.

“California still lags behind the national average of organ donors, and our goal is to close that gap,” Jim Martin, CEO, Donate Life California said in a statement. “We are grateful to partner with Goodwill of Orange County, a respected organization that has given us access to a whole new way to register donors.”

According to Martin, transplants were halted during the beginning months of the coronavirus pandemic with hospitals anticipating an increased demand for their ICU and emergency beds. There was also concern over the spread of the virus between donor and recipient. However, organ procurement organizations immediately began testing every potential donor to ensure no transmission, and the state was able to increase the number of transplants from 4,412 in 2019 to 4,531 in 2020.

Goodwill visitors can pick up a flyer or scan a QR code to access the Donate Life organ donation registration online.

(Courtesy of Casanova / McCann)

Visitors to any of the 25 retail locations throughout the county can scan a QR code to be directed to the registration website or pick up a flier with instructions.

O.C. Goodwill shops opened at reduced capacity with safety precautions like required face masks, social distancing and sanitizing fitting rooms during summer of last year and are now back at 100% capacity since the county moved to the less restrictive orange tier.

Typically during April, Goodwill, which helps people facing barriers find and keep jobs, sees about 90,000 donors, and staff hope the nonprofit will be able to drive registrations for Donate Life.

“Goodwill started with the mission that there is no waste in people, no waste in products,” said COO Corrine Allen. “When we talked about this [collaboration], we thought it gets back to our roots of reminding people, there’s no waste, whether that means that everyone should hold a job or that we should be sustainable with our body parts.”

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