[ From _The_Wall_Street_Journal_, July 8, 2002. This
is long, but I think that the language that people
use is as weird as the facts, and needs to be savored
in its full extent. The final symbol is especially
exquisite, although I wonder if exploiting dying and
dead children and their suffering relatives for the
pleasures of irony isn't even worse than exploiting
them for fame, money and a good job. Everyone is
guilty. ]
As Make-A-Wish Expands Its Turf, Local Groups Fume
Fight Erupts Over Children Who Are Terminally Ill;
Big Dollars Are at Stake
Trying to Meet Jeff Gordon
By LISA BANNON
After Connie Downey's daughter was diagnosed with leukemia in 2000, a hospital social worker suggested that the family apply to the Make-A-Wish Foundation to brighten her two-year-old's spirits.
Ms. Downey eagerly signed a form to apply for an all-expense-paid trip to Disney World. But instead of an uplifting experience, the Gahanna, Ohio, mother of two soon found herself in the middle of a fierce battle among children's wish-granting organizations.
After signing the forms. Ms. Downey discovered that a family friend worked for another wish- granting organization in nearby Columbus called A Special Wish Foundation. But when Ms. Downey called Make-A-Wish to tell them she was going with Special Wish instead, a Make-A-Wish representative became very upset, she says. "She said, `You can't do that. We do wishes better than anybody else,' " recalls Ms. Downey, who was still grappling with the news of her daughter's illness. She ended up going to Florida with Special Wish last spring.
A spokesman for Make-A-Wish says the incident sounds "entirely out of character" for the employee, who retired from the foundation earlier this year.
Butting Heads
As the Make-A-Wish Foundation grows and expands to more cities across the U.S., it's butting heads with small, independent wish-granting organizations, many of which are long-established in their communities. The resulting competition for donations and sick children is roiling the world of wish granting, and the issue of helping children sometimes gets lost in the turmoil.
The reason for the rivalry is simple: The more kids a group can count as helping, the easier it is to raise money. Now, as charitable dollars dwindle nationwide due to the economic slowdown and a realignment of philanthropic giving after Sept. 11, the number of wishes a group grants is taking on even more weight.
The battle has grown increasingly antagonistic as the smaller groups, often dependent on volunteers, find themselves struggling to survive after the nationally prominent Make-A-Wish has come to town. Some city officials have weighed in, seeking to keep out the big national charity. "It's not unlike small retailers against Wal-Mart," says Katherine Culpepper, executive director of Los Angeles-based Starlight Children's Foundation, the only other children's wish-granting organization with a national presence.
Big vs. Small
Claiming they were adequately serving their territories before Make-A-Wish arrived, some of the small groups charge that the big organization isn't just gobbling up donations, but also creating awkward situations with overlapping services and employing monopolistic practices that hurt local efforts.
The smaller groups insist that they have some inherent advantages over Make-A-Wish. For one thing, all the dollars donated to the local groups stay within their respective communities. What's more, most argue that they have lower overhead because they have fewer paid staffers.
"We should not have to compete for children and money," says Terry Hudson, executive director of the Indiana Children's Wish Fund in Indianapolis. "They use all their muscle and money to get what they want."
By far the Goliath of the wish-granting world, Phoenix-based Make-A-Wish was formed in 1980 after a group of Arizona state troopers granted a wish to Christopher Greicius, a seven-year-old suffering from leukemia. They gave the boy a ride in a police helicopter and made him an honorary officer. After Chris died, his mother, Linda Bergendahl-Pauling, and several of the troopers formed a memorial fund to grant wishes to other children with life-threatening illnesses. The response was overwhelming.
Over the past 22 years, the Make-A-Wish Foundation of America has grown from a loosely knit band of volunteers into a highly successful charity with 79 U.S. chapters and a network abroad. It posted $131 million in revenue last year, up from $84 million in 1998, when it recruited a new chief executive, Paula Van Ness, from the National Alliance to End Homelessness. It has helped 97,000 kids -- more than 10,000 last year alone -- and is supported by major sponsors such as Morgan Stanley Co.'s Discover Financial Services, AMR Corp's American Airlines and Walt Disney Co.
Expansion is fundamental to the Make-A-Wish mission: for "people everywhere to share the power of a wish." The group estimates that there are 25,000 children diagnosed with life-threatening illnesses in the U.S. every year -- far more than can be accommodated by Make-A-Wish and the smaller groups combined.
Thus, "we feel compelled to grow," says Ms. Van Ness.
Ms. Van Ness has opened and bolstered chapters, boosted national staff and hired skilled marketing and fund-raising executives. She launched a new logo and corporate identity, and then promoted them with a national advertising campaign. To protect the Make-A-Wish brand, Ms. Van Ness even brought in a full-time general counsel. She also has focused on generating revenue through Internet auctions and a line of greeting cards.
The aggressive expansion has also helped the foundation beef up executive salaries, and fund-raising and advertising expenses, while still devoting a large chunk of revenue -- 79% -- to wish-granting and other services. Ms. Van Ness made $233,876 in fiscal 2000, while her general counsel, David Mulvihill, earned $193,827. The salaries are in line with those of other national charities of similar size, yet they are a far cry from the average $50,000 to $60,000 that many smaller independents pay their top executives. Nationwide, Make-A-Wish has 500 paid staffers and 25,000 volunteers.
The next step, Ms. Van Ness says, is to expand the number of local field offices, which currently number 113. Over the years, "there was some sensitivity" to existing wish-granting groups, she says, which is why some cities are only now being covered. And she pledges to continue to be sensitive as Make-A-Wish moves forward with its expansion.
Nonetheless, clashes have become inevitable. One of the thorniest is in Bowling Green, Ky., where a group called the Dream Factory has been trying to set up a meeting between racecar driver Jeff Gordon and Trent Kruger, a local 17-year-old boy with a birth defect that left his arms much shorter than normal. Mr. Gordon's foundation referred Dream Factory officials to Make-A-Wish. The car-racing champion gets "an overwhelming number" of requests, and so he has come to count on Make-A-Wish to do the "weeding out," explains the president of Mr. Gordon's foundation, Kathy Boyd.
Under a policy established about a year ago, however, Make-A-Wish denied the boy access to Mr. Gordon. The only way it would relent, a series of e-mail messages between the two organizations show, is if the Dream Factory handed credit for the wish over to Make-A-Wish.
"I think it's petty," says Connie Welborn, the boy's mother, who adds that her son feels "very let down" but doesn't want to switch charities. "It's not about the kids, it's about the recognition."
Ms. Van Ness says her foundation stopped assisting groups such as the Dream Factory because of concerns that the Make-A-Wish brand could be damaged. If Make-A-Wish helps another group, she says, many families assume the big national organization is granting the wish. If top-notch service isn't provided, it then becomes a black eye for Make-A-Wish. "If they didn't get super treatment -- a limo ride, staying in a nice hotel -- people get confused," she says.
Make-A-Wish has also spurred resentment in Jacksonville, Fla., after opening a field office last fall. Officials from two local children's hospitals, the city council and the local children's wish-granting group, Dreams Come True, all tried to dissuade the big organization from coming to Jacksonville. Dreams Come True, they argued, had been serving the area well since 1984.
"Make-A-Wish is a wonderful organization, but the needs of children here are already being met," says Eric Sandier, division chief of hematology-oncology at the Nemours Children's Clinic in Jacksonville, who wrote Make-A-Wish a letter urging it to stay away. "If they come, it's confusing. It gets very hard in terms of fund raising."
In a meeting with Make-A-Wish in May 2001, the Jacksonville officials suggested that the big charity open an office in areas that weren't being served, such as Pensacola and Tallahassee. "I say, go where you're needed, go where we can't reach, but don't come here and take up our resources," says Suzanne Jenkins, vice president of the Jacksonville City Council.
But Make-A-Wish sees things differently. According to its calculations, at least 300 children in the Jacksonville area should have been eligible for wishes in 2001. Dreams Come True granted 125 wishes last year.
Make-A-Wish derives its so-called wish potential, or the estimated number of children suffering from life-threatening illnesses in any given area, from a formula that includes population and the incidence of seven deadly conditions: cancer, HIV, AIDS, muscular dystrophy, sickle cell anemia, cystic fibrosis and complications from organ transplants. "Our wish potential is showing that there are children not being served" in Jacksonville, says Ms. Van Ness.
But the Make-A-Wish CEO, who says that the situation in Jacksonville has become "very awkward," acknowledges that decisions on where to open offices are also influenced by something else: donors and sponsors who want their dollars to flow to certain cities and regions. For example, the jewelry industry has formed a charita- ble fund to underwrite a wish in all 50 states. The United Auto Workers of General Motors has similarly requested that its donations cover the entire U.S.
Another sore point with local groups is that Make-A-Wish has exclusive deals with most of the major airlines. "We can't get Delta to give us frequent-flier miles," grouses Cynthia Lake, director of the Children's Dream Fund in St. Petersburg, Fla. She notes that donors have tried to transfer their miles to her group, only to be told by Delta and others that Make-A-Wish is the sole wish-granting organization they'll deal with. A Delta spokeswoman says that while she understands "the predicament the smaller groups face," it's simply not practical to do business with everybody. "You could spend all day handling requests," she says.
Sometimes when Make-A-Wish arrives in a city, confusion results. Ms. Hudson, director of the Indiana Children's Wish Fund, says she was furious when she picked up a copy of a Make-A-Wish newsletter in late 2000. In it was a "thank you" to local donors who had contributed money in the memories of children who had recently passed away. The donations were sent to Make-A-Wish because of the impression that the foundation had fulfilled wishes for these children before they died. But, in fact, five of the 68 children on the list had been granted wishes by the Indiana Children's Wish Fund, not Make-A-Wish.
Ms. Hudson was especially upset says, because she had notified the local each of the five children had died, asking that if Make-A-Wish mistakenly received funds for any of the kids, it should forward the money to her group, as their parents had requested. "This is not sour grapes," Ms. Hudson says. "This is unethical behavior."
Make-A-Wish denies that its chapter in Indianapolis behaved unethically. When asked about the incidents, a spokesman says the Indiana chapter made a mistake and is in the process of setting the record straight with the donors. They can then decide whether to redirect their money to Ms. Hudson's group or keep it with Make-A-Wish.
Rather than fighting Make-A-Wish, some smaller wish groups have instead joined forces with the national organization. In Nashville, for example, the all-volunteer DreamMakers Inc. decided to merge with Make-A-Wish in 2000.
"We can provide a lot more services as Make-A-Wish" than as DreamMakers, says Jack Miller, president of Make-A-Wish of Middle Tennessee. Volunteers at DreamMakers were getting weighed down by the growing number of children seeking wishes, he adds, and arranging wishes with celebrities is far easier with the well-known brand.
"I've always found them to be good, charitable partners," says Ms. Culpepper, the Starlight Children's Foundation executive director. "If a larger group is saying we can do more for the kids and bring in major resources, why wouldn't you do that?"
---------------------------------------------- An e-mail exchange between Vicki Weaver, vice president of the Dream Factory, and Darlene Davenport, wish coordinator for Make-A-Wish Foundation of Kentucky, in March 2002: ---------------------------------------------- Ms. Weaver: I have a local child requesting to meet Jeff Gordon and was informed by his foundation that he works through your organization. I would like to know if it is possible for your organization to assist us" with allowing Trent to meet Jeff Gordon. It would be great if we could [work] together on this.
Ms. Davenport: As you stated, we have in the past assisted Dream Factory in wishes. However, since then, a national policy has been put into place stating that we can no longer assist wish-granting organizations. I am sorry.... Good luck and best wishes.
Ms. Weaver: Should I refer this child and family to your Louisville Chapter?
Ms. Davenport: We are sorry that we aren't able to assist you in this wish; however, if you are agreeable to turning this wish over to us, we can do that. If so, I will keep you apprised on the status of the wish. Let me know. Thanks! :)