The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has donated $7.047 million to the American Red Cross, with the money earmarked for new blood-collection machines, a sickle cell program, and disaster relief vehicles at a moment when Utah's blood supply has been stretched thin. Nearly $3 million of the gift is going toward blood services and medical equipment, including 50 new collection machines, while $2 million is directed to the Red Cross Sickle Cell Initiative and $710,000 will expand the Red Cross blood laboratory in Murray.
According to KSL, the church also sent $850,000 to support relief efforts following April's Super Typhoon Sinlaku in the Northern Mariana Islands and Guam, and it funded four emergency response vehicles alongside the blood equipment. W. Christopher Waddell said the church is grateful to strengthen the Red Cross's ability to care for people, per the outlet's report. Cliff Holtz thanked the church for its unwavering partnership and extraordinary generosity year after year, adding that the church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has led the way in helping the Red Cross deliver its mission.
The 50 new machines funded by the donation are Power Red collection units, which use automated apheresis to draw two units of red blood cells from a single donor in one visit while returning plasma and platelets to the donor, according to the American Red Cross. That efficiency matters in a state where the timing could hardly be sharper: Utah blood donations sank to a four-year low in late summer, coinciding with a national Red Cross blood emergency driven by a severe seasonal donor slump, as Hoodline previously reported.
A Century-Old Partnership Built on Blood Drives
The relationship between the church and the Red Cross stretches back more than a century, per KSL's reporting, and the humanitarian ties actually trace to the 1898 Spanish-American War, when Red Cross founder Clara Barton and LDS Relief Society President Emmeline B. Wells corresponded to assemble volunteer comfort kits for soldiers, according to the Red Cross. That early wartime collaboration eventually helped establish the Red Cross chapter in Salt Lake City.
The church held its first organized blood drive in 1996 and has since become the Red Cross's largest blood drive contributor nationwide. Church members donate about 97,000 units of blood each year, and church-hosted blood drives have collected more than 1 million units in total, the KSL report notes. In March, a single three-day coordinated effort across 21 LDS stakes in Utah alone collected 802 units of blood, according to the Red Cross.
Sickle Cell Funding Targets a Persistent Shortage
The $2 million directed toward the Sickle Cell Initiative addresses a specific and long-standing gap in the blood supply. Since the Red Cross established that initiative in 2021, community partner outreach supported by philanthropic grants has increased annual Black or African American blood donors by more than 89% and expanded donations used to treat sickle cell patients by 91%, the Red Cross reports. Sickle cell disease predominantly affects Black patients, who often require frequent transfusions of closely matched blood types.
Blaine Maxfield called the donation an investment to strengthen the Red Cross and those who rely on it, according to KSL's account, and said working with the American Red Cross can expand access to essential services and support individuals, families and communities. This year's $7.047 million gift follows $5.1 million donated in 2025 and $7.35 million in 2024, placing the church within the Red Cross's Mission Leader donor tier reserved for organizations contributing more than $3 million annually.
Why the Timing Matters for Hospitals
The donation lands against a backdrop of strained national blood supplies. Roughly 62% of the U.S. population meets blood donation eligibility requirements, but only about 3% actually donate in a given year, even as hospitals require roughly 30,000 units of whole blood daily, Hoodline has reported previously. Mobile blood drives, which normally supply roughly 60% of regional blood stocks, drop sharply during summer school breaks — a pattern that compounds the kind of shortfall Utah saw this year.
Beyond blood collection, the partnership now extends into disaster infrastructure. Under an updated Memorandum of Understanding signed in March 2024, the church and the Red Cross formally designate LDS meetinghouses nationwide as potential emergency shelters and conduct joint disaster planning drills, marking the fifth formal agreement of its kind signed between the two organizations since 2005. The church also funds JustServe, a free volunteer-matching platform that reached over 1 million users and facilitated nearly 38,600 community service projects globally in 2025, connecting members directly to Red Cross-related community projects, as Hoodline has detailed in coverage of a related Las Vegas event.
The $7 million gift represents a small slice of the church's overall humanitarian footprint. In March, the church reported in its annual “Caring for Those in Need” summary that its total global welfare, humanitarian aid, and emergency response expenditures reached $1.58 billion across 196 countries in 2025, up from $1.45 billion the year before, according to KSL's reporting.
