Vitalant: Blood Donation Donor Analysis

Capstone Team: Matt Greenfield, Sam Hartman, Josh Kennedy

Vitalant, the nation’s largest independent and nonprofit blood services provider, has been facing declining blood donations over the past decade. The United States as a whole is facing blood supply shortage.

Pittsburgh area donor information for a 12-year period was the basis of examination, analyzing, and modeling for the team. Data was taken through many iterations of analyzing trends and developing churn prediction models.

The team confirmed a handful of the theories posited by the Vitalant team sponsors and brought new information to light. The disparity among older and younger donors was confirmed, yet the team was able to identify that this is mainly due to lack of returning donors in younger generations. Donors that returned acted similarly across all generations.

The team was able to isolate which factors are indicative of higher churn (or lower retention), which are mainly the amount of prior visits and whether the previous visit was successful. While the team was able to confirm many suspicious and bring new trends to light, many of these analyses can be continued for future work to continue to understand the donor base behavior, especially as more data becomes available.