Make-a-Wish Bait-and-Switch
Medical science is saving many more children's lives, but wish-granting charities go on raising as much as ever.
A largely overlooked report by Bob Shaw in the St. Paul Pioneer Press revealed the bad news for people who like bad news: the death rate for children from one to fourteen has dropped by half in the quarter-century since the founding of Make-a-Wish (national foundation, EIN 86-0481941 Form 990, with seventy-six separately incorporated local chapters).
As a result, Make-a-Wish and other wish-granting charities have to scramble to find worthy kids to grant wishes to—and overcome their "grim reaper" image when they try to help those who are not actually dying.
In the article, a spokesperson for the Make-a-Wish group claimed that since 2000 the group has stopped saying that it only helps the dying. But here's what the Form 990 says:
The Foundation's purpose is to grant the wish of each child between the age of two and a half and eighteen who has a life-threatening medical condition, i.e. a progressive, degenerative, or malignant medical condition that has placed the child's life in jeopardy.
Is this enough to save Make-a-Wish from the accusation that they are misleading donors? A Google search on the phrase "progressive, degenerative, or malignant" turns up thiry-eight hits related to Make-a-Wish, but that compares to over five million for "Make-a-Wish" itself. So the new formula is not getting much play in the public forum.
The wish-granting business is huge. The Make-a-Wish organization's consolidated annual report reports that the Make-a-Wish network as a whole (chapters as well as national) raised $176 million last year. It granted 12,550 wishes—trips to Disney World account for a third of them. The average direct cost is $6,450, so that the actual cost of wishes is $80 million, almost exactly half the total amount raised.
New CEO David A. Williams earned $272,420 for not quite a full year in 2005 (he started January 10 according to the BBB Wise Giving Alliance report). General Counsel David B. Mulvihill took home $227,371 and CFO Paul Velaski $218,485. There were six other staff in six figures. Total staff attached to the Phoenix headquarters operation is 66.
Especially with charities with a strong emotional appeal like Make-a-Wish, more attention needs to be paid as to whether the organization is raising money in excess of actual need. Currently, none of the charity watchdog agencies and no state regulatory body has much to say about this. It is left to the media to raise the issue. And as this article shows, even media coverage does not alway guarantee wide coverage or interest. So kids continue to get lavished with wishes and charity executives get salaries most of us can only wish for.
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