Seven more programs
worth a look.

The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency is still working to identify roughly 81,000 missing U.S. service members. To match recovered remains to a name, the lab needs DNA reference samples from the missing person’s blood relatives.

An eligible family member requests a Family Reference Sample kit, swabs the inside of their cheek, and mails it back in a prepaid envelope. It is the exact same painless buccal swab as a marrow registry — no needles, done at the kitchen table.

The eligible population IS military families — precisely who ORTB and Honest MOS already reach. The problem isn’t willingness; it’s that most eligible relatives have no idea the program exists or that their swab could finally bring someone home. Pure awareness gap, identical mechanic.

The military’s own blood supply — the official provider of blood products to U.S. forces, in near-constant shortage. A single donation can be split to help up to three patients.

Whole blood or apheresis (platelets/plasma) at ASBP centers on installations. Unlike marrow, it’s repeatable — you can give again in weeks. A 2025 Red Cross partnership now links the military and civilian supply for the first time.

It’s recurring, not one-and-done, so a single Soldier becomes a lifetime donor. The eligible pool is the formation itself, and the drive choreography ORTB already runs maps directly onto a blood drive.

Umbilical cord blood is packed with blood-forming stem cells that can be used for transplants — and it’s one of the fastest ways to fix registry diversity. It’s otherwise discarded as medical waste.

Expecting parents at a partnering hospital consent before delivery; collection happens after birth with zero risk to mother or baby, and it’s free. Two Army medical centers — Tripler and Womack — already partner with public banks.

Military families have babies constantly, the program is almost unknown on post, and each donation disproportionately helps patients of underrepresented ancestry — the same diversity argument at the heart of ORTB.

Living-donor kidney transplant built around veterans. DOVE (Donor Outreach for Veterans) runs donor campaigns and education; the National Kidney Registry’s Veteran Shield supports veteran recipients with travel costs and donor prioritization.

Veterans register as recipients through DOVE, or donors give through the NKR voucher program — donate now, hand a voucher to a loved one who may need a kidney later. All standard voucher donors get prioritized themselves if they ever need one.

Higher commitment than a swab, but the “demystify the fear” content play is identical — and this one is explicitly veteran-built, so the trust is already there.

An international nonprofit fighting blood cancer that runs one of the world’s largest marrow donor registries — and it already runs Army drives (it’s in ORTB’s own story archive).

Same cheek-swab registration as NMDP, civilian-facing, with a mail-a-kit option for anyone not near an event.

The cleanest civilian-side partner for ORTB: when a drive draws family and friends who aren’t DoD-affiliated, DKMS (or NMDP) is exactly where they go. Same database, same patients.

Locates compatible blood for patients with rare blood types whose antibodies make them incompatible with nearly all standard blood. Rare types cluster by ancestry, so matches usually come from the same ethnic population.

Donors are identified through ordinary blood donation plus special antigen/DNA typing at the blood center; the rare ones are flagged onto a national registry and called when a unique patient needs them.

A young, diverse, healthy pool is exactly where rare types get discovered — and it bolts straight onto an ASBP blood drive. Same event, second mission.

Two of the largest precision-medicine research cohorts in the world. All of Us is the civilian, NIH-run program (1M+ enrolled); the VA’s Million Veteran Program is its veteran counterpart, already past one million.

Enroll, consent to share health-record data and a biosample, answer surveys. Both run active, diversity-focused recruitment and explicitly want under-represented populations.

Not a transplant, but the same funnel: a trusted voice closing the awareness gap for a young, diverse population. If ORTB’s engine works for marrow, it works here too.