Description of proposed project

More than enough people sign up to donate their kidney each year, yet roughly 98% of potential living donors never make it to surgery. Over 30% of potential donors are ruled out for addressable health reasons, like being a few pounds overweight. Despite the life-saving potential of living donation, the current system lacks programs or pathways to support these motivated individuals in overcoming barriers to donation.

Project Donor supports prospective living donors who have been ruled out of donation for addressable barriers. We provide free, targeted support for the most common barriers to donation, including programs for weight loss, smoking cessation, blood pressure control, mental health, and financial assistance. These programs, paired with our 1:1 case management, provide participants with the support they need to overcome their barriers and donate.

Since our first donation in February 2023, Project Donor has onboarded over 1,300 participants and enabled 133 successful transplants. We have over 534 active participants working towards donation across our 85 partnered transplant centers, and a 16% donation rate– 8x the national average. Since launching, the program has grown at an average month-over-month rate of 14%, reflecting strong and accelerating demand among prospective donors.

Our program is also notably cost effective. We spend just $65 per participant per month on our program (including administrative costs), and this number is decreasing. This translates to ~$2400 for each life saved, comparable to current GiveWell standards for effective charities.

In the past year alone we have seen incredible growth, doubling our number of partnered transplant centers and increasing our rate of new participants; however, this is just a start. We want to reach the entire market, partnering with all 215 transplant centers nationwide and reaching the estimated 14,000 annual potential donors, yielding 2,000 annual counterfactual living kidney transplants.

In addition, we want to continue to push for system-wide change in eligibility practices. Eligibility is often treated by centers as a fixed status; donors ruled out during initial screenings are left with no path forward. Project Donor believes eligibility is malleable and can change through low-lift behavioral interventions. We are starting to see this view being adopted by transplant centers like UCSF, who increased their BMI cutoff to support more previously rejected donors.

By combining direct support with systems-change advocacy, Project Donor is working to ensure every motivated donor has a real chance to save a life, and no donor is left behind.

Why are you qualified to work on this?

Project Donor began as an idea at the University of Chicago’s Center for RISC, a nonprofit incubator and think tank founded by Dr. Steven Levitt. Since our first surgery 2 years ago, we’ve grown into a national effort backed by strong partnerships and demonstrated success (> 1,000 participants served and a 16% donation rate).

We’ve built relationships with 85 transplant centers nationwide and countless organ-aligned institutions, including NKDO, The Living Bank, Gift of Hope, etc. In addition, our corporate partners (Noom, Weight Watchers, BetterHelp, Nicorette) allow us to provide cost-effective, high impact interventions to our donors. Finally, we partner with universities to host Master’s-level nutrition and social work interns who provide valuable, low-cost support to our donors.

We have also garnered interest from major stakeholders in the industry to sustain Project Donor long term.