Every year approximately 6,400 people in the U.S. die because there are not enough organs available for transplantation; the quality of life of approximately 100,000 people currently waiting for an organ transplant is also unfortunate. When an organ donor dies, his or her organs will save on average 3 lives; unfortunately, despite their interest in becoming one, many people are not organ donors. It has been shown that requiring people to make the decision during their driver's license renewal at the DMV increases the number of organ donors significantly; making the decision box "opt-out" instead of the common "opt-in" increases registrations even more. The goal of this project is to legally change the DMV forms across the United States.

Change the Default is an organization started January 1, 2011 with the purpose of decreasing the number of deaths that occur due to the long wait time for organ transplants in the United States. The strategy for accomplishing this involves researching the reasons for lack of organs available for transplantation, finding the best way to change the status quo, and finally working to make the positive change.

The name "Change the Default" is inspired by the psychological finding that defaults matter: when confronted with a difficult choice, people will often keep the default option. In some European countries, the default is for people to be organ donors; despite it being a free choice to opt out, as many as 99% of eligible adults are organ donors. This produces the effect of having more organs available to those in need.

Are you an organ donor?

• Every year approximately 6,400 people in the U.S. die while waiting for an organ transplant
• Over 100,000 U.S. residents are waiting for an organ transplant
• Organs taken from a deceased organ donor on average save 3 lives and improve the lives of numerous others
• Only about 30% of Americans are signed up to be organ donors
• Due to various conflicting laws, many organ donor's wishes of organ donation are not fullfilled

Our goal is to develop the best actionable plan which will maximize the number of lives saved through legal organ donations in the United States.

We are currently contacting other organizations and individuals to increase our plan's quality.

This page will be updated before January 18, 2011.

This page will be updated before January 18, 2011.

This page will be updated before January 18, 2011.