Bloody Insulting

Dear Red Cross: I have donated blood for 50 years - believing in its importance to others. Your current campaign to promote blood donations seems off-putting in its approach. Offering prizes (such as Amazon gift cards) misses the point of who you are appealing to. Blood donation is inherently selfless - entirely motivated by the needs of others, not self gain. To offer little "prizes" for donating feels more like insult than encouragement. The second off-putting approach is the perpetual scream of "urgent need for blood" with no qualifiers as to relative severity or basis for assessment. Even sharing the urgency of need on a numerical scale would help - along with some basis for that evaluation. Really, I'll keep giving, but feel my donation is cheapened by your seeming assumption that I am motivated by receiving stuff -- and I'm insulted by the mindless shout of URGENT NEED with no basis for that evaluation being shared.