It’s the tenth day of my 12 Days of Charitable Giving for 2017. Readers have suggested deserving charities over the past few weeks, and I’ll be posting one a day for – well, 12 days (I’m clever that way). Today’s charity is Make-A-Wish International.
Make-A-Wish International started in Phoenix, Arizona in 1980, when a group of volunteers helped a 7-year-old boy with leukemia named Chris Greicius fulfill his dream of becoming a police officer. In 1993, Make-A-Wish International was officially formed to serve five countries outside the U.S. and now helps to serve children outside the United States in more than 50 countries on five continents through its 42 affiliates.
The mission of Make-A-Wish International is to grant the wishes of children with life-threatening medical conditions to enrich the human experience with hope, strength and joy. With the help of generous donors and over 40,000 volunteers, Make-A-Wish has collectively granted approximately more than 415,000 wishes worldwide since 1980.
Wishes tend to fall into four categories:
- I wish to go …
- I wish to be …
- I wish to meet …
- I wish to have …
A child’s treating physician will determine if the child is medically eligible for a wish, based on the medical criteria established by Make-A-Wish. Make-A-Wish International focuses on granting wishes of those eligible children who are at least 3 years of age but have not yet reached their 18th birthday.
Today, Make-A-Wish grants the wish of a child with a critical illness every 17 minutes, on average, somewhere in the world.
You can see some of the wishes which have been granted here.
And yes, it all started with one wish.
So how can you help?
To make a one-time or recurring donation by credit card, head over to the organization’s donor page on its website.
You can also donate by phone (602.230.9900).
To make a donation by check or money order, make it payable to Make-A-Wish International and mail to:
Make-A-Wish International
4742 N. 24th St, Suite 400
Phoenix, AZ 85016
You can also donate frequent flyer miles: Donated miles never expire. To donate your miles, select “Make-A-Wish International” through Delta’s SkyWish or United’s MileagePlus programs. Make-A-Wish notes that the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) does not consider donations of frequent flier miles to be tax deductible. This is largely because IRS does not treat the receipt of miles as taxable when received (see Announcement 2002-18, which downloads as a PDF, for more).
As always, you want to make sure that your donation is going to a qualified charitable organization. A search using the IRS’ Exempt Organizations Select Check confirms that Make-A-Wish International is on the list.
To find out more about the work of the organization, check out their website, like them on Facebook, or follow them on Twitter and Instagram. You can also view more Make-A-Wish stories by subscribing to their YouTube channel.
I often suggest checking out third-party sites like Charity Navigator for more information about charitable organizations, including evaluations and access to tax forms and other financials. Make-A-Wish International has a four-star ranking on Charity Navigator.
Remember: submissions to the 12 Days of Charitable Giving are made by readers, and in most cases, I can’t personally vouch for the good work that these folks do. So be generous but be smart: Do your homework.
For more on making charitable donations, check out this prior post.
