2023 Lifeblood Stats and Snacks

Blood Donations 

We started 2023 on a high in January with our biggest ever month for plasma donations. In fact, you helped us smash a few Lifeblood records throughout the year, as we collected a whopping 1,633,788 donations, and met 105,069 brand spankin’ new blood donors, and more than 2300 Lifeblood Teams joined our ranks – welcome!

Together you donated the equivalent of more than 1.7 million Venti coffees, or 92 concrete mixers, or 92,441 basketballs of blood products throughout 2023. 

On the Road 

Special mention to those of you who boarded a big red bus in the past year, as our network of mobile donor centres expanded by 9% in 2023, bringing Australian patients an additional 14,042 donations, and introducing us to 4,875 donors. 

Footy Fever 

In July we opened Lifeblood’s smallest CBD donor centre at Moore Park, home of the Sydney Swans. Since then this small but mighty collective of 1,750 donors has contributed 2,485 donations, or 300 footballs of blood!  

Townsville: a bunch of Lifeblood Legends 

Speaking of small but mighty, Townsville donors are our hardest-working, bucking the national trend for our regulars who donate 2.98 times a year (don’t ask us how you make .98 of a donation, our data team assure us this is fact), Townsvillains make themselves at home at their donor centre 4.31 times a year.  

A-OK UK 

Since we first put out the tea and biccies for our UK mates in July 2022, those people who were previously unable to donate due to vCJD risk have made more than 150,000 blood donations. Special mention to the West Aussie contingent, where these donors contribute 13.5% of all donations – around the rest of Australia UK expats contribute about half of that, at 7% of all donations. 

Milk 

It takes a village of support to help premature babies survive, and we're grateful to the 395 mothers who donated 4,815 litres of breast milk to help thousands of premature babies.  

The Great Australian Snack Off 

And now we get to the really important stuff: snacks. After a nail-biting tie last year, with party pies and sausage rolls neck-and-neck at 144,000 each, this year the party pies have emerged victorious.

830,000 party pies went through the Lifeblood pie-warmers, alongside 772,000 sausage rolls.

Not to be left out, more than 193,000 vegetarian baked goods graced your post-donation plates. 

And in what seems to us an exceptionally good trade, more than 1 million litres of blood was collected in 2023, and more than 200,000 litres of Nippy’s was given out. Chocolate proved to be the favoured option there (76k), only just ahead of the iced coffee flavour (72k).  

Thank you to each and every one of you who has donated, advocated, visited, or snacked with us this year. We can’t wait to welcome you back again soon.