About The Council

The Arkansas Donor Family Council (ArkDFC) is comprised of a group of Arkansas donor families, transplant recipients and volunteers that work to provide support for other donor families and works to promote organ and tissue donation awareness.

The ArkDFC members represent the wide range of Arkansas families that have made the choice to give the “gift of life” through organ and tissue donation - coming from different areas of the state, having different economic and social statuses, having different life experiences, and at different points of their lives. Some of the members are donor mothers or fathers; others are donor husbands or wives.

Regardless of these differences, their lives have been brought together through donation and their desire to help others.

The ArkDFC works hand-in-hand with the Arkansas Regional Organ Recovery Agency (ARORA) in their donor family aftercare program:  meeting with the ARORA staff and working to develop and refine their support program to better serve donor families, and meeting one-on-one with donor families – answering their questions, listening to their concerns, providing advice and a sympathetic ear based on our own personal experiences. The ArkDFC works to educate the public about the need for organ and tissue donations – once again, answering questions, addressing concerns, and sharing what donation has meant in our lives based on our own personal experiences.

The ArkDFC currently holds several donation awareness/fund-raising events throughout the state, among these are the Memorial Golf Tournament and Party at the Pond. Funds raised at these events are used to provide sponsorships for donor families to attend national donor family support events, such as the biennial Transplant Games of America.  These events promote organ and tissue donation awareness and raise funds used to provide scholarships and to help fund worthy causes  in the donors' memory.

The members have found that by serving on the ArkDFC, they are able to keep their donors an active part of their lives – honoring their donors by continuing to share about them and the “gifts” they gave – finding comfort themselves while at the same time providing support and comfort to other donor families and helping to raise awareness about organ and tissue donation.