Associated Students, Inc., in conjunction with the Sacramento Medical Foundation Blood Centers, will host a 24-hour blood drive beginning at 6 a.m. on Thursday until 6 a.m. on Friday in the University Union.

The event is called “It?s Big,” and the goal is to supply much needed blood to Sacramento area blood banks while attempting to break the Guinness World Record for units of blood donated in a 24 hour period. The current record stands at 3,155 pints of blood collected.

“We have the staff and the room to break the record,” said Tricia Randall, ASI Community Events Coordinator.

Randall, who coordinated a similar event last November that came up short of the record, insisted this drive has a better chance to reach the goal.

“It certainly will go a lot more efficiently than last year. A lot of it has to do with the fact that we are not amateurs,” Randall said.

The difference, according to Randall, is that she has learned what to expect. At last year?s event, a shortage of beds and a lengthy registration process created a two-hour backlog that lasted throughout the drive. The event was only open 11 hours and was limited to the University Union Ballroom.

This year, the entire Union will be utilized and the bed count is at 105, about double what it was last year. There will also be about 50 more nurses on staff to tend to the donators. Leslie Botos, director of Public Relations and Development for SMF Blood Centers, worked with Randall on last November?s blood drive and she agreed that the event was a learning experience.

“What we learned from that is that it can be done,” Botos said.

SMF Blood Centers has been working for months to recruit volunteers and tie down sources for equipment, food and beds, as well as getting publicity for the event.

Since the blood drive will be around-the-clock, SMF Blood Centers will supply 600 staffers and volunteers to help with activities and prize drawings. Recruits from the Merced County blood center, Blood Bank of the Redwoods and the Stanford blood center have been asked to participate.

An estimated 4,000 donors are needed in order to break the record. In order to get that many people to donate, an elaborate publicity campaign has been launched.

The campus has been saturated with flyers, area rotary clubs have been enlisted and postcards have been mailed. Advertisements have appeared in virtually every local newspaper, with 500,000 inserts in last Sunday?s edition of The Sacramento Bee.

“What we need more than volunteers right now is donors. It is not one of those things where if we build it, they will come. If we want the donors there, we have to get them there,” Botos said.