UNOS DonateLife

January 21, 2000

UNOS Receives Million Dollar Kirby Foundation Grant

Richmond, Va. - The United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS) has received a $1 million grant from the F.M. Kirby Foundation, the largest gift in the not-for-profit network's 15-year history. The award is also the first major contribution to UNOS' Mission for Life Capital and Endowment Campaign.

UNOS recently launched the campaign to raise $25 million. Seventeen million dollars will be raised to enable the national transplantation network to underwrite new and existing education programs that increase organ donation, as well as initiatives in data research for policy-making and continued improvements in patient outcomes. Another $8 million will go toward the construction of a new national headquarters building at the Virginia Biotechnology Research Park in Richmond.

"The F. M. Kirby Foundation's contribution is vital to our efforts to increase organ donation and continuously improve transplant outcomes. We appreciate the Foundation's leadership in helping to bring us closer to accomplishing this mission," said Walter K. Graham, UNOS executive director.

The Foundation designated $750,000 of the gift for the UNOS building. The remaining $250,000 will go to the Requestor Project, a UNOS educational initiative to increase the number of families who say "yes" when approached about donating a loved one's organs. A $100,000 grant from the Kirby Foundation in 1997 allowed UNOS to begin this project.

"We are delighted with this grant from the Kirby Foundation. Their generous gift serves as a challenge to potential contributors here in Richmond," said Dr. Eugene P. Trani, president of Virginia Commonwealth University and Honorary Chair of the UNOS Mission for Life local campaign.

The F.M. Kirby Foundation is a family foundation based in Morristown, N.J. Its grantees are largely in geographic areas of particular interest to five generations of family members and organizations with which family members have been associated. The Foundation also supports a number of national medical organizations whose programmatic focus is of particular interest to the family.

According to UNOS, more than 65,000 men, women and children are registered for organ transplants, however an average of 13 patients die every day while awaiting the organ they need. UNOS members work together to increase organ donations by encouraging individuals to sign an organ donor card and to discuss their decision with their next of kin.

UNOS is a not-for-profit membership organization comprised of every transplant hospital and organ procurement agency in the country, as well as voluntary health organizations, transplant recipients and organ donors and their families. The group has operated the nation's Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network since 1986 through a contract with the Health Resources and Services Administration. Since then, UNOS has coordinated nearly 200,000 transplants, and works continuously to increase the number of persons who benefit from organ transplants through education, data research and policy.

Honorary chairmen for the national UNOS Mission for Life fund-raising campaign are Dr. Michael E. DeBakey, who pioneered open-heart surgery, directed the first multiple organ transplant and worked on an artificial heart, and Nobel Prize Laureate Dr. Joseph E. Murray who conducted the world's first successful organ transplant in 1954.