Buy a List, Save a Life

You already know that great leads can save a career, but did you also know they can save a life? That’s what Robert Chatwani and Sundeep Ahuja learned when they went in search of a bone marrow donor for their friend, Sameer Bhatia, a leukemia patient whose life depended on a bone marrow transplant.

The problem for Bhatia was the best donor matches are typically found in someone of the patient’s own race and ethnicity. Yet less than 1 percent of the six million people registered with the National Marrow Donor Program (NMDP) are, like Bhatia, South Asian. With no match on the NMDP registry, Chatwani and Ahuja turned to infoUSA, a provider of proprietary business and consumer databases, sales leads, direct marketing, and email marketing.

The two friends purchased a list of 1,391 people with Sameer’s last name, Bhatia. Of the 1,391 names, 689 had phone numbers available. Volunteers then launched a telemarketing campaign targeting the Bhatia community based on registry drives in their area. They were asked to visit the HelpSameer.org Web site to learn more, then go out and register. Four weeks later, they found a “10 of 10” match – the closest kind of match and the one that will give Bhatia the greatest chance of becoming cancer free.

For more info on NMDP or infoUSA, visit www.nmdp.org and www.infoUSA.com