Year In Review: Celebrating a Milestone-Filled 2024

Written by Zoe Engels, Contributing Writer and Editor

Now that we’ve gotten into the rhythm and groove of 2025, we’re thinking back to 2024 and all our incredible chapters’ accomplishments. 

It was truly a year filled with big, life-saving wins:

• Thanks to your support, we surpassed our goal of 100 chapters a whole year ahead of schedule! SODA now has 115+ chapters nationwide. 

• Our student leaders collectively educated 77,747 people and registered 3,657 new donors in 2024. That means, in total, our chapters have now educated more than 200,000 people total about organ, eye, and tissue donation and registered more than 11,500 people as donors! 🎉

  
  

What else did we get up to in 2024? We…

• Celebrated 10 years of SODA and 10 years of saving lives! We even hosted SODA’s 10th birthday celebration with our chapter at Bellarmine University. 

• Partnered with 32 Organ Procurement Organizations to provide more support to our chapters.

• Bittersweetly, said good-bye to Sara Royf (née Miller), SODA’s founder, as the Board President, and welcomed Erin Kupferman as our new Board President. We also welcomed two new board members: Kevin Barnes and Colleen McCarthy. 

• Refreshed our supply kits and increased our event grants by 50 percent.

• Announced our new partnership with The Alliance, a nonprofit that helps keep the organ donation and transplantation community connected while also providing professional development opportunities. 

• Continued saving lives with the Association of Organ Procurement Organizations (AOPO), Donate Life America, and the United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS).

• Attended conferences including the UNOS Management Forum, AOPO Annual Meeting, The Alliance National Critical Issues Forum, the Association of Multicultural Affairs in Transplantation Annual Conference, and the Donate Life America Annual Conference. 

• Celebrated National Multiethnic Donor Awareness Month as a National Multicultural Action Group Member. 

• Received a pledge of $450K from The Contigo Foundation toward supporting SODA’s growing chapter network and our students’ organ, eye, and tissue advocacy efforts across the next three years. 

• Awarded the fourth annual HBCU Organ and Tissue Donation Advocacy Scholarship and third annual Student Advocacy Scholarship to ten total students.

• Recognized the winners of our second annual 2024 Campus Challenge. The 27 teams reached 23,3889 people through education about organ, eye, and tissue donation and registered 278 new donors.

  
  

… and much more!

We couldn’t have done it without all of you and your support. Thank YOU for making these milestones happen and uplifting student organ, eye, and tissue donation advocacy.

Here’s to another milestone year of saving lives!