Solving the Organ Donation Crisis

Give me 3 minutes. The click was worth it. 

I'll keep this short. Friends, family, and possibly strangers: 

I'm moving to New York next week for the next three months to help solve the U.S. organ donation crisis. 

I've accepted a position with ORGANIZE.org  to work on a small, but brilliant team of 11 to help build the nation's first Central Organ Donor Registry, coordinating organ donor registration across almost all U.S. states, with the goal of making organ donor registration a much more quick, and more seamless process.

Before ORGANIZE came on to the scene, people could only register at the DMV and there were 52 different registeries out there that didn't speak to each other. 

Consequently, we're challenging the establishment. The federal and state governments, people, and systems, and bureacracies that have been in place for decades. 

We want to "put ourselves out of business" within five years by sufficiently increasing the supply of donated hearts, lungs and pancreases to outstrip the demand for them. 

While my heart has never felt called towards something greater, ORGANIZE is a non-profit and a non-profit salary in New York doesn't go very far.

If there is anything I know how to do, it's the hustle, and I will be taking on a second job to help fund my living expenses.  However if 200 people (and I have exactly 1,773 on Facebook alone) donated one of their lunches or coffee breaks this week worth $10, I could easily have half of my goal and be able to focus on the work I have in front of me (..rebuilding a broken system that has 22 individuals dying while they are on a waitlist each day) without the financial burden and stress. 

I am planning to arrive in New York on Sunday, May 22nd - this timeline is quick, but there is a lot of work for me waiting at ORGANIZE.  I plan to hit the ground running. 

If you've kept reading up to this point, I thank you again. I hope you find this cause as compelling and urgent as I do. 

I truly, truly believe in the work that I do, and have done. Our greatness should, needs to serve a greater purpose, and I believe that I have dedicated my, albeit short, life thus far to that. View my career history here.

I have firsthand seen how long and emotionally and financially tumultous it can be waiting for a loved one on an organ donation list, and to think that this is something that can be solved in as little as five years, blows my mind. Makes me want to leap states over to New York right now. 

I could go on and on about how passionately I believe in the work that I am going to undertake the next three months, I already know it will be the hardest I have ever worked.  

Thank you for reading, for supporting, for sharing. My heart is endlessly grateful, and each person who donates will get a personal handwritten note, (and if you're in Austin, the biggest hug of your life when I return).  

read more on why I choose to #donatemyparts here 
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ORGANIZE’s co-founders were named in INC Magazine’s “35 Under 35” in 2014  and each honored as a TRIBECA Disruptive Innovation Fellow . ORGANIZE was also named one of O Magazine’s “Health Breakthroughs of 2014"  and Fast Company called it “the startup to end the organ shortage."  In 2014, ORGANIZE won the $1 million 1st Prize in the Verizon Powerful Answers Award, and also received an Innovator in Residence position in the Secretary's Office at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
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