Become a bone marrow donor in the United States

In the United States, NMDP signs people up directly from 18 to 35, while DKMS, an NMDP member organization, signs up people from 18 to 55 into the same registry. Gift of Life, an affiliated registry of NMDP, is also among the U.S. donor centers NMDP lists. [1, 8, 10, 12, 14]

In the United States, the donor registry belongs to the federal C.W. Bill Young Cell Transplantation Program, which Congress created through the Stem Cell Act of December 2005 and renewed in 2010, 2015 and 2021. HRSA says NMDP operates the registry under federal contracts. [20, 21]

HRSA says the U.S. registry began in 1987 as the National Bone Marrow Donor Registry, started with a grant through the U.S. Department of the Navy. NMDP, known over the years by other names including the National Marrow Donor Program, took the single name NMDP in early 2024 and runs the same registry. [4, 20]

NMDP lists four U.S. donor centers: NMDP in Minneapolis, DKMS in New York, Gift of Life Marrow Registry in Boca Raton, Florida, and the C.W. Bill Young DoD Marrow Donor Program in Rockville, Maryland. NMDP says where you donate depends on the organization you signed up through. [8]

Salute to Life, the Department of Defense program, signs up service members and their dependents, reservists, National Guard and Coast Guard members and DoD civilians aged 18 to 60, at walk-in sites on bases or with a mailed kit. Salute to Life says it has recruited more than 1 million potential donors since 1991. [7, 16]

Gift of Life, based in Boca Raton, Florida, began with the donor drives held for its founder, Jay Feinberg, whose four-year search for a matching donor ended in May 1995. Gift of Life says that in 2001 it became the first registry to use bloodless testing, the cheek swab, at donor drives. [17]

Gift of Life says it introduced Hero Gum in 2025, a gum new donors chew so that it can collect the tissue type information used for matching, its first new collection method since it introduced cheek swabs in 2001. [17]

Every U.S. donor center feeds the registry NMDP manages, so one sign-up is enough. [8]

NMDP says each donor search through it reaches more than 43 million potential donors and more than 760,000 cord blood units, on its own registry and 48 cooperative registries around the world. [9]

In WMDA’s Search & Match, NMDP listed 8,944,304 adult donor records (Oct 5, 2026) and 180,763 cord blood units (Sep 17, 2026), Gift of Life 558,058 adult donor records (Oct 5, 2026), and New York Blood Center’s National Cord Blood Program 32,842 cord blood units (Jul 10, 2026). WMDA counts records, not people. [25]

HRSA’s C.W. Bill Young program also funds the Stem Cell Therapeutic Outcomes Database, which collects data on bone marrow and cord blood transplants, and an Office of Patient Advocacy that supports patients and families from diagnosis through survivorship. [22]