Welcome to the MatchMaker homepage! MatchMaker is the only national program dedicated to mixed race bone marrow donor recruitment and education. This year, 30,000 people will be diagnosed with diseases that are treatable with a marrow or blood stem cell transplant. People are most likely to find a marrow match with someone of the same racial or ethnic background. Of those registered with the National Marrow Donor Program Registry®, only 25% are racial minorities, with mixed race people representing mere 2%. By diversifying the pool of potential donors, MatchMaker is working to make sure that all individuals, regardless of their heritage have a better chance at finding a life-saving match!

Founded in 2001 by MAVIN interns Justin Nieman and Yazmine Tarhouni MatchMaker works with local donor centers, recruitment groups and the National Marrow Donor Program to address the chronic shortage of multiracial donors on the NMDP.

In states like California and Washington, more multiracial babies are born than any other race except Caucasians, yet our society lacks awareness about the unique health issues facing multiracial children. Specifically, multiracial people have great difficulty finding marrow or blood stem cell matches to cure potentially fatal diseases like leukemia.

MatchMaker is an innovative, award-winning program. For our unique approach to health issues, MatchMaker received the 2002 “Heroes of Health Care” Award for Innovation from the Washington Health Foundation. And thanks to the efforts of MatchMaker and our partners, Washington Governor Gary Locke signed an executive order to mandate paid leave for all state employees who donate blood, marrow or organs.

We have recently combined our efforts with the Help Nicole organization to best realize our goals of multiracial donor recruitment and education! Together we have organized over 100 bone marrow drives locally and across the nation, registering nearly 6,000 new potential donors and more successfully registering all minority donors than the NMDP!

Matchmaker launched its second national effort to recruit multiracial donors last November. The National Campus Marrow-thon registered over 2, 000 new donors, 41 percent of which identified as multiracial!

Please take 15 minutes to take a simple blood test and join the National Marrow Donor Program Registry today! You can save a life!

MatchMaker Project Sponsors
MatchMaker is made possible through the generosity of our project sponsors:

The Harvest Foundation
CityBank
Kim Marine Documentation, Inc
Lucky Seven Foundation
The Harvest Foundation
Washington Women's Foundation
MAVIN "One in a Million" 2003 Auction Donors
Dubs, Inc.
Tully's Coffee
The Seattle Police Officers Guild
Puget Sound Blood Center

Encouraging Effective Recruitment
MAVIN is seeking funding to publish recruitment materials to assist blood centers across the nation to effectively recruit multiracial donors. If you are interested in underwriting this crucially important initiative, please let us know.