To donate blood or for information on how to organize a blood drive, call 1-800-933-2566 or visit www.nybloodcenter.org

If you cannot donate but still wish to participate in bringing crucial blood products to patients in need, please ask someone to donate for you, or consider volunteering at a local blood drive.

NYBC also offers special community service scholarships for students who organize community blood drives during summer months.

Any company, community organization, place of worship, or individual may host a blood drive. NYBC also offers special community service scholarships for students who organize community blood drives during summer and winter months. Blood donors receive free mini-medical exams on site including information about their temperature, blood pressure and hematocrit level.

Eligible donors include those people at least age 16 (with parental permission or consent), who weigh a minimum of 110 pounds, are in good health and meet all Food & Drug Administration and N.Y. or N.J. State Department of Health donor criteria. People over 75 may donate with a doctor's note.

New York Blood Center is one of the nation's largest non-profit, community-based blood centers. For fifty years, NYBC has been providing blood, transfusion products and services to hospitals serving more than 20 million people in New York City, Long Island, the Hudson Valley, New Jersey, and parts of Connecticut and Pennsylvania. NYBC is also home to the Lindsley F. Kimball Research Institute and the National Cord Blood Program at the Howard P. Milstein National Cord Blood Center, the world's largest public cord blood bank. NYBC provides medical services and programs (Clinical, Transfusion, and Hemophilia Services) through our medical professionals along with consultative services in transfusion medicine. Please visit us on Facebook at www.Facebook.com/newyorkbloodcenter. Follow us on Twitter: @NY_BloodCenter.