Springfield resident David Butt has donated enough blood to completely fill 33 human beings.
“After I retired, I made it my personal goal to be a maximum blood donor to the extent that my health would allow me to do that,” said the 71-year-old Butt, the former emergency management director for Springfield and Sangamon County. “I hope to stay healthy enough to continue as a blood donor as long as I live, to literally donate for life.”
Butt became a 50-gallon donor after reaching the 400 donations milestone during June. He timed that donation to coincide with World Blood Donors Day on June 14.
“That day fell on a Sunday and I had never donated on a Sunday before,” Butt recalled. “But I made the appointment and got it done.”
Butt’s commitment inspired Impact Life, the independent blood center where Butt donates, to nominate him for the Fresenius Kabi National Blood Donation Hall of Fame. Butt will receive that recognition during a ceremony later this year at Impact Life in Springfield, and he will be one of 12 donors to be included in the Hall of Fame Calendar for 2027.
Fresenius Kabi is an international company that makes blood collection and processing products used worldwide, and 24 times per year Butt is hooked up to their products as he makes his regularly scheduled platelet, or Power Red, donations. Butt switched from whole blood donations, which can only be done every 56 days, to platelet donations in 2008 and has maintained a regular donation schedule ever since.
Butt’s blood donation journey began in 1990 when he and his wife, Deborah, were expecting their first child and the doctor asked David’s blood type. Butt didn’t know, so the physician recommended that he go to the Central Illinois Community Blood Center in Springfield to make a donation, and they would inform him of his blood type.
David is type B-Positive, which is in high demand for platelet donations, and Deborah is O-Negative, the universal donor blood type. But what was good for blood donation wasn’t necessarily good for their child, as certain parental blood types in combination can cause pregnancy complications.
“With our positive and negative blood types my wife needed to get a shot. When our second child was due, she also had to get a shot,” David recalled. “When that baby was born, I made a donation in recognition of his life.”
That donation started a commitment that Butt intended to keep. Butt had an arrangement where his Sangamon County employer allowed him to donate blood at 7 a.m. if Butt was at his desk by 9 a.m.
“The workday started at 8 a.m., so I was donating using one hour of my time and one hour of Sangamon County’s time. But as an emergency manager I was on call 24/7, so I really thought the arrangement was fair,” Butt said. “Since I retired, I do not go at 7 a.m. because that time should be reserved for people who are working.”
On Jan. 20, 2009, David’s younger son, Erick, asked his father to take him to make his first blood donation on the national day of service for President Barack Obama’s inauguration. Father and son watched the inauguration on TV while Erick donated. Erick later became president of the National Honor Society at Springfield High School and was the only high school student donor at Central Illinois Community Blood Center, now known as Impact Life, to reach the two-gallon milestone before graduation.
In the summer of 2024 Dr. Erick Butt began his medical career serving rural populations in southern Illinois. He continues to regularly donate blood.
All of his blood donations are special and potentially life-saving, but David said that occasionally he is made aware that a donation is heading straight from his arm to someone specific.
“On my second donation in February this year I was told I had a targeted donation. That meant my platelets were an exact match for somebody in the system who needed them right away,” Butt said. “My second donation in March and my second in April were also targeted. I was elbow to elbow with somebody who needed exactly what I had.”
The average human body contains one and a half gallons of blood, or 12 pints. Each blood donation is one pint. Very few people will donate 50 gallons, or 400 pints of blood, but those who collect and distribute the precious commodity hope that more people will consider making that first vital donation.
“They opened up donation to more people.”
More people than ever before are eligible to donate blood – up to 60% of the U.S. population – but currently only 3% do so on an annual basis. Those who collect and distribute blood products hope to improve upon that statistic.
Khara Koffel of Jacksonville makes a blood donation July 17 during an American Red Cross blood drive at Visions 1908 in Springfield. Jason Miranda of the Red Cross helps get the process started.
PHOTO by David Blanchette
New guidance from the Food and Drug Administration in 2023 now allows some gay men to be blood donors, reversing a long-standing rule. According to redcross.org, blood donation is now more inclusive for the LGBTQ+ community, and many are now able to donate blood through a new screening process that expands blood donor eligibility and eliminates questions based on sexual orientation.
“When they opened up donation to more people, we were happy to go along with that. We were excited to open up a new pool of donors,” said Jayce Eustice, regional communications manager for the American Red Cross of Illinois. “You never know if your parent, sibling or child will be in need of life-saving blood until it happens, so having more potential donors is a plus.”
Eustice said blood donations in Illinois have increased since 2023, but he’s not sure whether the new FDA guidelines are the reason.
“I want to say since they’ve loosened the rules it’s allowed more people to give and we are collecting more blood,” Eustice said. “Our collections have grown, but I can’t pinpoint it specifically to that reason.”
Tara Matheson is the director of donor recruitment and engagement for Impact Life, which now encompasses the former Central Illinois Community Blood Center.
“We want the most amount of people to be able to give,” Matheson said. “It’s always good news when the FDA allows this to happen.”
Matheson said that when she started in her job 25 years ago, if you got a tattoo you had to wait a year to donate blood.
“We worked with our state legislators to get a law in Illinois where tattoo parlors need to get licensed and regulated to ensure their safety,” Matheson said. “Once that happened, it reduced the risk. So now when you get a tattoo from a licensed and regulated tattoo parlor you can donate once that tattoo site has healed.”
There have also been some guideline modifications regarding blood donation and travel. Previously, those who visited certain countries had to wait a year before donating blood, but those restrictions have now been reduced to a three-month wait.
“We had some travel regulations go from one year to three months and that is very helpful for those who travel,” Matheson said. “My in-laws were going to Nicaragua every year. My mother-in-law donated regularly before they started doing that, and we lost her because she would travel there every year and she wouldn’t be eligible to donate. Now it’s three months and she’s ecstatic; she’s able to give now.”
“There is a constant need for blood donation.”
The relaxed donor guidelines help, but there continues to be a need for more blood donations. The American Red Cross declared an emergency blood shortage in July because the blood supply fell by nearly 25% during June. The Red Cross had seen a steady decline in blood donations since the end of May and distributions to hospitals were nearly 3,500 units higher per week than expected, according to Eustice, from the American Red Cross of Illinois
“Summer is the height of the trauma season when there is an increased demand for blood due to injuries and other medical emergencies,” Eustice said. “So a readily available blood supply is essential. We continue to push for donors so doctors can focus on what they really need to do without worrying about whether life-saving blood products will be available to them.”
Springfield is part of the American Red Cross’ South and West Central chapter, which stretches from Quincy to Decatur to Marion and includes 33 counties.
“The need for blood is constant throughout the year. Blood is perishable, it cannot be stockpiled in advance,” Eustice said. “It’s something we have to continually replenish, and that’s why there is a constant need for blood donation.”
The universal blood donor type is O-Negative but there is always a critical need for O-Positive as well, Eustice said. In addition, blood organizations are always looking for people to make a Power Red, or platelet donation, where the blood is taken out, gets put through a centrifuge which separates the platelets, and gives back the plasma and other blood products, he added.
“People are distracted, especially during the summer months, because they’re out spending time with family and friends and blood donation is not necessarily at the front of their minds,” Eustice said. “We always stress how important blood donations are, that they can help cancer patients, new mothers, premature babies, people battling sickle cell disease. These individuals are sometimes in fights for their lives and have to rely on the generosity of others coming out, rolling up their sleeves, and making blood donations.”
Impact Life’s Matheson said there’s a simple reason why people may not be donating blood.
Tara Matheson, Director of Donor Recruitment and Engagement, at Impact Life’s Springfield donor center at 1999 Wabash. PHOTO BY DAVE BLANCHETTE
“The No. 1 reason people don’t give is because no one has ever really asked them,” Matheson said. “We want to encourage new people to give. Our Baby Boomers were our biggest chunk of donors but now they’re getting older and they have health considerations. Our younger donors aren’t replacing them at the same rate that the Baby Boomers drop off.”
Matheson said that people can donate blood at age 16 with a parent’s consent, but once they reach the age of 17 they can donate as often as they wish.
“People can sign up for an appointment online at bloodcenter.org, and they can go to any of our 22 donor centers across the region,” Matheson said. “We also have blood drives but we like to have appointments scheduled for those to better use our staff and resources. But of course, we will always accept walk-ins.”
Once at the donor center, the process is pretty straightforward.
“We register you, give you a mini-physical to make sure it’s safe for you to give blood to someone. We ask a bunch of questions to make sure you are a viable candidate for blood donation,” Matheson said. “If you pass all of that you hop into a donor chair and the process of giving blood doesn’t take long, it’s super easy.”
“We will move that blood to where it’s needed.”
Impact Life is an independent blood center, and a little over half of the nation’s blood supply comes through independent blood centers. Impact Life supplies blood to approximately 120 hospitals. These include nearly half of the hospitals in Illinois, including Memorial Health System and HSHS St. John’s, plus portions of Iowa, Wisconsin, and the Metro East and St. Louis areas.
Blood that is donated in Springfield is processed and tested locally to get it patient ready and then distributed to hospitals in the Impact Life system.
Sandy Kirk of the Red Cross helps Marc Benner make a blood donation July 17. Benner and his wife, Khara Koffel, both donated during a blood drive at Visions 1908 in Springfield. PHOTO BY DAVE BLANCHETTE
“If a hospital has some blood that we need to use at another hospital, we will move that blood to where it’s needed to better manage our blood supply,” Matheson said. “Donors are giving us this blood to save people’s lives so we want to do our best to manage it in the best way possible because blood has a shelf life of 42 days.”
Impact Life also makes sure that emergency responders have the blood products they need.
“People always assumed that our EMS vehicles and helicopters carried blood products. They didn’t, but now they do,” Matheson said. “We’re starting to become suppliers of type O blood to these EMS services and they’re able to save more lives.”
Matheson is familiar with stories like those from champion blood donor David Butt and other “amazing humans” who donate, where the donor will sometimes be informed where their blood donation is headed. It starts when the Impact Life laboratory tests donors’ blood for certain antibodies, antigens and proteins.
“Some people who receive a lot of transfusions can have reactions if you don’t narrow it down to those specific things in the blood, so we have a team that identifies donors who are giving blood in order to match a specific patient,” Matheson said. “My team reaches out to those donors, and it’s an easy thing to convince someone to come in and give when you say there’s a patient in a hospital that they match specifically who needs their blood.”
Matheson has been with the Central Illinois Community Blood Center and Impact Life for 25 years of its 55-year existence.
“My father was a blood donor when I was growing up and I remember always seeing his donor plaques, so when this job opening came up, I ran to it,” Matheson said. “My grandfather had leukemia and blood donations kept him alive for two years so he got to know his granddaughter. He died when I was 2 so I didn’t know him, but that was a story I grew up with, so I wanted to work here.”
Impact Life started as the Central Illinois Community Blood Center in Springfield in 1971. Around 2010 the local center combined resources with the Mississippi Valley Regional Blood Center in the Quad Cities and a year later brought in Champaign-Urbana’s Community Blood Services of Illinois. These three independent blood centers became Impact Life, a name change that made better sense for marketing purposes, Matheson said.
The Springfield Impact Life donation center at 1999 Wabash has been operating since 2015, and the organization also has an administrative building on 10th Street.
Springfield resident Ashley Welch gave blood at the local Impact Life donation center on July 24, an activity she has done since attending college 20 years ago.
“When I was a kid, my mom would always come in and donate blood and I would come with her and I thought it was interesting to watch,” Welch said. “Then my husband had a kidney transplant three years ago so now in return I donate blood for that.”
Welch encouraged people who have never donated to give it a try.
“A lot of my friends are afraid of needles but I tell them it’s not scary, it’s a tiny little pinch and then you’re done,” Welch said. “It’s an awesome feeling. My mom and I are both O-Negative so we’re universal donors, and there’s also something in our blood that allows them to donate it to babies, which isn’t always the case.”
“I give as frequently as I possibly can.”
The American Red Cross of Illinois has no blood center in Springfield – its closest such facilities are in Decatur and Quincy – but the organization hosts a number of mobile blood drives where it sends teams into the community.
One such blood drive was held July 17 at Visions 1908 on South 11th Street in Springfield, and two Jacksonville residents stopped by to donate a pint.
“I give as frequently as I possibly can. I just love the idea that it’s something that I can easily do,” said Khara Koffel. “If I can make blood, surely I should be able to give it to somebody else to help. To me it’s a very low-cost, great way of giving back to people.”
Koffel and her husband usually donate together and have some fun with it.
“We’re both pretty good at blood donation and we like to see who can go the quickest, whose blood is flowing the best,” Koffel said. “It’s just a friendly little competition.”
Koffel’s husband, Marc Benner, is a relatively new blood donor.
“My wife has always done it and I have two friends who work in blood banks across the country, so it seemed like something good to do,” Benner said. “It makes me feel good, it’s nice to know that it’s going toward helping somebody, and the app I use tells me where it’s going.”
American Red Cross of Illinois’ Eustice said blood drives can be hosted at
“local businesses, community centers, churches or schools, pretty much any place that has air conditioning and space where we can safely collect blood.”
To find a local blood drive visit redcross.org, click on find a blood drive, and type in your ZIP code. Donors seeking a blood drive can also call 1-800-RED-CROSS.
“You can do a whole blood donation every 56 days. The process usually takes a little less than an hour,” Eustice said. “You get checked in, go through a health screening, make the donation, get some snacks, and get sent on your way.”
Eustice said there’s not a competition between the Red Cross and independent blood centers, and all blood donations are appreciated.
“While we collect 40% of the nation’s blood supply and we have partners throughout the United States, at the end of the day our goal is the same, to make sure that people have access to blood products when they need them,” Eustice said. “It’s really about saving lives.”
This article appears in August 6-12, 2026.
