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Glen W. Karsten was founder and the first president and chief executive officer of The Living Bank International. Before her death in 2002, Mrs. Karsten spoke about the beginning of The Living Bank International:
In 1968, there was wide media coverage of the early transplants by Dr. Denton Cooley and his associates. My friend, Louise Johnson, asked if I knew of an organization through which she could arrange to donated any part of her body for transplant purposes. To my knowledge, there was no such organization. So Louise, Joan Anderson, Esther Phillips, Marjorie Robertson, and I decided to start one.
The next problem was money, but my husband came to the rescue by offering seed money from the Floyd L. Karsten, Jr. Foundation. Once his interest was aroused, he became an active participant by finding an office trailer to use as our office. The Medical Center Bank gave permission to put the office on their land and we opened. What a huge decision that turned out to be! |
The Living Bank program was unique, so it was given broad coverage by the local and national media. Letters began arriving even before we opened our office, saying. "This is something I want to do, but I haven't known how to do it."
Dr. Cooley, an early and strong supporter, helped us choose our logo, the ancient Egyptian symbol for the Tree of Life. We printed a modest amount of material. Since then we have printed and distributed millions.
The Living Bank's first official donor registrant was a kidney transplant recipient, who got up from his bed at Hermann Hospital, and walked slowly across the parking lot of the trailer to sign up. |
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The Living Bank is a private, non-profit organization dedicated to the enhancement of organ and tissue donation. Our mission is to educate the community about the urgent need for donors so no one will die or suffer for lack of a donation; to support organ recipients and their families; and to honor donors.
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Living Bank is the oldest and largest organ donor education organization in the United States, and the only national organ donor registry that keeps computerized records of organ donor data for future retrieval in an emergency.
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There are other groups and organizations that encourage organ and tissue donation. These include:
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- Other organ donor registries and groups which educate the public about organ donation.
- Organ Procurement Organizations, which are federally-franchised, actually procure donor
organs by sending surgical teams into hospitals to take the organ transplant while the recipient waits. - Transplant centers are located in authorized hospitals where actual organ transplants take place.
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| Living Bank cooperates at every opportunity with each segment of the organ donor and transplant community; supporting any group or organization whose activities generate more committed organ donors or facilitate actual organ donation. |
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The Living Bank International is a 501 (c)(3)non-profit organization dedicated to saving lives through organ and tissue donation and transplantation.
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The mission of the Living Bank is to motivate and facilitate the commitment of enough organ and tissue donors so that no one will die or suffer for lack of a donation.
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| The functions of the Living Bank are: |
- Providing an information center to support appropriate agencies
in the maximum use of donated organs and tissues. - Educating the public regarding the donation and use of organs and tissues.
- Providing international donor commitment and automated registration services.
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As we enter our 38th year of service as the only nationwide organ and tissue donor registry, we can take pride in our many accomplishments. Also we are cognizant of the many challenges we still face before the day comes when no one will die because a donor organ was not available at the time of need. The Board and Staff of Living Bank dedicate their efforts to increase the number of registered-informed donors.
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Staff
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Carole Keeney Harrington
President & C.E.O.
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Julie Ann Wallin
Vice President
Controller
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Lori Roy
Office Manager
Database Administrator
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Chance Roberson
Webmaster
Assistant Database Administrator
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Melissa Spell
Community Relations
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Contact Us:
info@livingbank.org
The Living Bank
P.O. Box 6725
Houston, TX 77265-6725
Ph: 1 (800) 528-2971
Fx: 1 (713) 961-0979
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| Privacy Statement |
The Living Bank values and respects all individuals and organizations seeking to donate time, money, or resources to groups in need. We understand that you may be concerned about privacy issues that surround the use of the Internet.
We believe that you should have control over who receives your personal information, whether it concerns where you live, what your interests are, or how you choose to conduct transactions.
Therefore, we do not use or disclose information about your individual visits to The Living Bank or information that you may give us, such as your name, address, e-mail address or telephone number, to any outside companies.
Information about The Living Bank Visitors In general, our service automatically gathers certain usage information like the numbers and frequency of visitors to The Living Bank's website and its areas, very much like television ratings that tell the networks how many people tuned in to a program. We only use such data in the aggregate. This collective data helps us determine how much our visitors use parts of the site, so we can improve our site to assure that it is as appealing as we can make it for as many of you as possible.
Information About You:
We may specifically ask for information about you when you make donations or select a volunteer opportunity. We will need certain information -- such as name, home or Internet address, billing information -- in order to provide that service or information to you. This information will be used solely for the purposes of completing your donation or locating the volunteer opportunity you are seeking.
The Living Bank uses reasonable precautions to keep the information disclosed to us secure. However, we are not responsible for any breach of security. The Living Bank also links to other sites and we are not responsible for their privacy policies or how they treat information about their users.
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