Enquirer Consulting Group

Donation Partner Map

Prepared for Jennifer Prinz · Vital Impact Health Group · September 2026
An organ procurement organization does its work through partners, so this map covers the partner groups Donor Alliance and LifeSource name on their own sites, across Colorado, Wyoming, Minnesota and the Dakotas. For each group it shows who holds the relationship on the partner side and roughly how many exist, counted from public federal files.
Who holds each relationship
Eight groups. They overlap and count different things, hospitals in one row and counties in another, so read each number on its own and never add them together. Wyoming is counted as a whole state, while Donor Alliance's area covers most of it. Western Wisconsin, part of LifeSource's area, is left out.
Acute care hospitals
Every hospital in Medicare must have an agreement with its designated organ procurement organization, notify it in a timely manner of each patient who has died or whose death is imminent, and work with it on staff education and death record reviews. That makes the referral a standing hospital duty, and the relationship an ongoing one.
Who holds it: the chief nursing officer, with the ICU and emergency department leaders whose staff make the referral call.
About 140
acute care hospitals on the federal hospital file, VA and military hospitals included, plus 5 children's hospitals. Your own sites give their own counts: more than 100 hospitals for Donor Alliance, over 270 for LifeSource.
Critical access hospitals
The largest hospital group in these five states, and more than half of all the hospitals on the federal file there. Federal rules cap each one at 25 inpatient beds and give it the same referral duty as a large hospital. In Minnesota and the Dakotas they are about two in three of the hospitals; in Colorado and Wyoming, more than two in five.
Who holds it: the chief executive or administrator, with the director of nursing.
About 200
critical access hospitals on the federal hospital file.
Transplant centers
Where recovered organs go. Donor Alliance's page names four transplant centers in its service area, and LifeSource's site says it works with nine.
Who holds it: each program's surgical director, with the team that decides on organ offers.
13
transplant centers as the two organizations count them on their own sites, 4 and 9.
Tissue and eye processors
Where recovered tissue and corneas are prepared for transplant. Donor Alliance's partner page lists ten tissue processors; LifeSource's names four tissue partners and two eye partners. At least one name appears on both lists.
Who holds it: the processor's partner relations or donor services lead.
10 and 6
named on Donor Alliance's page and on LifeSource's. The lists overlap, so they are not added.
Coroners and medical examiners
Donor Alliance's coroner program asks every county coroner in Colorado and Wyoming to notify it of any death that does not happen in a hospital. LifeSource's page for medical examiners and coroners sets out the reports it provides to support the death investigation.
Who holds it: the county coroner or medical examiner, with the death investigators who take the first call.
About 290
counties across the five states, from the Census Bureau's county file. The row counts counties, not offices.
Funeral homes
Both organizations run a program for them. Donor Alliance has a full-time funeral services liaison, and LifeSource publishes reimbursement guidelines so the family is never charged for donation. LifeSource's page accepts a funeral home referral within 12 hours of the time of death.
Who holds it: the funeral director or the owner of the home.
About 560
funeral home establishments with paid employees, from the Census Bureau's County Business Patterns, 2023.
Hospices and nursing homes
Both organizations work with them. LifeSource lists hospice and long-term care as a partner group of its own and asks for a referral within one hour of a cardiac time of death. Donor Alliance's site lists about 45 hospices among its hospital entries. People who die at home can still give heart valves, skin and corneas, as LifeSource's page explains.
Who holds it: the director of nursing, and the nurse present at the death.
About 220
hospices on the federal hospice file, plus about 750 nursing homes on the federal nursing home file.
Driver license offices
Where most donor registrations happen. Donor Alliance's page puts the share at nearly 99% in Colorado and Wyoming, and LifeSource's at over 90% in its states.
Who holds it: each state's licensing program leadership, and the counter staff who ask the question.
No honest public count
Donor Alliance names two state agencies and LifeSource works with three states' offices. The offices themselves are not counted here.
The five states, group by group
The same federal files, state by state. Each cell is banded on its own, so a row may not add up exactly to its total.
GroupCOWYMNNDSDAll five
Acute care hospitals551145819140
Critical access hospitals3019753540200
Funeral homes120253004570560
Hospices9020801316220
Nursing homes210353407095750

Where the openings are

1
Small hospitals are most of the hospital map. About 200 of the roughly 350 hospitals across the five states are critical access hospitals, each capped at 25 inpatient beds. The referral duty is the same in every one, so the habit has to hold in many small hospitals at once, each with its own staff to train.
2
Most of the map sits outside the hospital. Funeral homes, hospices and nursing homes come to about 1,500 across the five states, more than four times the hospital count. Tissue and eye donation can still follow a death at home, and a referral can start at any one of them.
3
The two service areas are built differently. Minnesota and the Dakotas hold about twice as many hospitals and nursing homes as Colorado and Wyoming, and nearly three times as many funeral homes. Yet the two sides hold about the same number of hospices, about 110 each. Hospices are about twice as large a share of the partner map in Colorado and Wyoming, so a practice shared across the system will weigh differently on each side.
Built from public files, all read on 25 September 2026: the federal hospital, hospice and nursing home files from CMS, the Census Bureau's county file and County Business Patterns, and the public partner pages of Donor Alliance and LifeSource. Hospitals sit in the state the federal file gives them, and psychiatric hospitals are left out. A listing proves a facility exists, not that it refers. Counts are banded deliberately: under 20 exact, then rounded, and a group with no credible public number says so here rather than showing one.
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