If you’re feeling generous, you have more options than to open your wallet or build a giftable DIY project. You have plenty of homegrown body parts you can donate to people in need. From blood and hair to your entire body, here are things you can contribute to a good cause now, or when you don’t need them anymore.




Blood


Who needs it? People with cancer or undergoing surgery often need blood; so do those who lose blood due to injury or who are being treated for a blood disorder. America’s Blood Centers reports that US hospitals use a combined 40,000 pints of blood each day.

Who can donate? Blood can carry bacteria, viruses, and even medications, so blood banks may turn you away due to drugs you take or diseases you have. They will even turn you away for diseases you might be at risk for, even if you’re sure you are safe. For example, men who have sex with men still cannot donate blood for 12 months. Some of these rules are set by the Food and Drug Administration, but individual blood banks can use stricter rules if they like. The Red Cross lists their eligibility criteria here.

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How to donate: The easiest way is to use this tool to look up a blood bank near you. The Red Cross is a big name in blood donation, but there are also plenty of smaller blood centers that each serve their own city, state, or region. At the drive or donation center, you’ll fill out a questionnaire and undergo a mini physical before lying down with a needle in your arm. Once you’ve donated your pint of blood, you’ll have a cookie and be on your way. You can donate again in six weeks.


You can also donate other blood products, like platelets and plasma. Blood banks won’t pay you for blood, but there are places that will pay you for plasma. They filter proteins from your plasma to make into medical treatments for conditions like hemophilia and immune disorders. You can donate plasma every 28 days.

Bone Marrow


Who needs it? People with leukemias and lymphomas, bone marrow diseases, and immune system disorders like SCID may need a bone marrow transplant. They can’t just use any bone marrow, either: the donor’s tissue type has to match the recipient’s. Most patients who need a transplant can’t find a family member whose tissue type is a close enough match to allow them to donate. That’s why registries are so important—maybe you are someone’s match.

Who can donate? Guidelines for who can donate bone marrow are similar to those for donating blood. In addition, you have to be a good tissue match for the person who needs bone marrow. People are most likely to match with someone else from their racial or ethnic background, so registries especially need people whose heritage is African, Latino, Native American, Asian, or mixed race. Most doctors will request a donor who is under 45 years old, since younger people’s cells make for more successful transplants.


How to donate: Sign up for the National Marrow Donor Program. As part of the registration process, you will swab your cheek and send the swab for testing. This is how they know what tissue type you are. Once you are on the registry, there’s about a 1 in 500 chance that you will end up being somebody’s marrow donor.

There are two ways you might be asked to donate. The older method is a surgery where you get a giant needle in your hip. It’s great for medical TV, but not very common anymore. These days it’s more likely that you will get five daily injections of a medication called filgrastim that causes your bone marrow to release stem cells into your blood. When you donate, a machine will spend several hours filtering those cells out of your blood. In the meantime you can watch movies and chat with friends. If you’ve been put off of donating bone marrow because you were afraid it was a huge, painful needle, don’t be.


Hair


Who needs it? Several charities collect hair for wigs. Pantene and the American Cancer Society give wigs to women with cancer. Locks of Love gives wigs to children with long-term hair loss. Find other organizations for children with hair loss here, or ask your local salon.

Who can donate? Each organization has their own requirements. Most ask that donated hair be at least 10 inches long (Pantene will accept eight), and some have requirements about the hair’s color and history, such as whether it has been bleached or dyed.


How to donate: Check your specific charity’s requirements before you have your hair cut. Typically you need to have your hair braided or gathered into a rubber band before cutting, and then you mail it to the charity. Some salons partner with a charity and will send your hair to them. That saves you a step, unless you want to take the hair home and send it to a different charity of your choice.

Breast milk


Who needs it? Human milk is the best food for premature babies, but their mothers often can’t provide it. They may be sick from whatever condition led to the premature birth, for example. Formula puts these babies at greater risk of deadly infections, so donated, pasteurized milk is the next best thing.

Who can donate? People who are producing milk, of course. Some milk banks require that you gave birth less than a year ago. You can read the Human Milk Banking Association of North America’s guidelines here. They are fairly strict, ruling out people with diseases that can be carried in milk, but also many people taking regular medications. Even if your milk is safe for your own, healthy baby, the requirements are meant to be an extra safeguard for medically fragile infants.


How to donate: First, get in touch with your nearest milk bank. Some may require that you live within a certain radius. Next, they will interview you and request a blood test. You may also need to submit doctors’ notes from both your own doctor and your child’s. You may also have to commit to donating a certain amount of milk, usually 100 ounces or more.

To donate, you just pump and freeze the milk according to the milk bank’s instructions. I donated when I was working and pumping milk for my own baby; every day I would pump eight ounces for my daughter and three ounces for the milk bank. (Actually, since they required a fussier protocol with lots of hand washing and pump sanitizing, I figured out I could pump extra for my daughter for a few days, and then dedicate one day’s full pumping session to the milk bank.) Once you have a stash in the freezer, pack it carefully and drive or ship it to the milk bank.


Sperm


Who needs it? Women and couples who need a source of healthy sperm to be able to have children.

Who can donate? Sperm banks often ask that donors live within an hour’s drive of the bank, and ask them to commit to a certain number of donations, for example four to eight per month within six months. Some also set minimum requirements for height and ask that you have a college degree. You will have to pass screenings for both infectious diseases and genetic disorders, and your sperm has to be able to withstand their processing steps—which means that even if your sperm is fine for fathering children the old fashioned way, it may still be rejected if it doesn’t meet the sperm bank’s criteria.


How to donate: Start the process by talking to your local sperm bank. The actual donation happens via masturbation at the sperm bank. Sperm donation pays pretty well: up to $50 per donation, according to Sperm Bank Directory. Each bank will set its own rates, of course.

Umbilical Cord Blood

Who needs it? The stem cells in cord blood can treat many of the same conditions as bone marrow donation—leukemias and lymphomas, bone marrow disorders, and immune system disorders.


Who can donate? You and your baby make the donation just after birth, but you’ll need to start the process when you are between 28 and 34 weeks of pregnancy. Begin by filling out this questionnaire from the National Marrow Donor program to find out if you are eligible. (They match people for cord blood donations as well as bone marrow.) Among other criteria, you and your baby must not have infectious diseases, blood disorders, or a family history of cancer.

How to donate: After your baby is born, hospital staff will remove blood from the umbilical cord and send it to the cord blood bank. You can find a list of participating hospitals here, or request a donation kit from the Be the Match.


Don’t confuse cord blood donation with cord blood banking. In banking, you pay fees (estimated at $4,000, although costs will vary) to store your child’s cord blood in case he or his siblings need it in the future. The American Academy of Pediatrics encourages cord blood donation to public registries, but not private banking for family use, since it is unlikely that a child’s cord blood could ever be used for the child or for his or her siblings.

Organs (or Your Whole Body)


Who needs it? Heart, lung, liver, kidney, intestine, and pancreas transplants can replace diseased organs and save lives. Corneal transplants can help to restore sight to people with certain eye conditions. Miscellaneous other tissues can help improve lives: skin can help patients with burns, tendons can help to repair an athlete’s injured knee, bone can help to repair injured limbs and prevent amputation. So...a lot of people.

Who can donate? In most cases, the rule is pretty strict: you have to be dead. Almost anyone can potentially be a donor, but the specifics will depend on your medical situation at the time of death, and whether you or your family gives permission.


How to donate: All you need to do while you’re alive is join your state’s organ donor registry or indicate on your driver’s license that you want to be an organ donor. If hospital staff don’t know your wishes, they will ask your next of kin whether they would like to donate your organs. Make sure to let your family know your intentions.

There is an exception to the rule about being dead, however. You can choose to donate a kidney or part of your liver while you are still alive. People typically do this to help out a relative or close friend, but it’s also possible to make a “non-directed” donation, where you offer up your organ for whoever needs it. If you think you’d like to do this, the American Transplant Foundation has a mentoring program where they match you up with another living donor to help you make your decision. If you still want to go ahead, the first step is to contact a local transplant center.


If you’d like to go whole hog and donate your entire body, that’s possible too. Medical schools use bodies to teach anatomy, and scientists can use donated body parts for medical research. You can even donate your organs, like we described above, and then give the rest of your body to science. ScienceCare can help you donate your body in any state except Minnesota and New Jersey, or you can contact a medical school or hospital directly. For example, the Mayo Clinic’s donation information is here. The school or company that handles your donation will return the cremated remains to your family a few weeks after death, and typically there is no cost to the family.


Deciding to donate your body, or any part of it, is a big decision. Since donations can benefit people in need—or medical research, which can benefit others in the future—it’s worth considering.

Illustration by Angelica Alzona. Photos by the Minnesota National Guard , Ed Uthman , Rochelle Hartman , the Hudson family , the Internet Archive , and Hikmet Gümüş .