A LETTER FROM OUR CEO, BETSY BIERN

Dear Make-A-Wish Greater Bay Area community, 

At Make-A-Wish Greater Bay Area, we seek to be a beacon of hope for our community in times of adversity. That is why we came together recently as a staff to collectively contribute to and agree on a statement speaking out against systemic racism, police brutality, and white supremacy, while standing with the Black community, our wish families, volunteers, donors, and neighbors in Oakland and beyond. 

We also agreed strongly that this statement should serve as the beginning of a much larger conversation that leads to action within our chapter. As CEO of a child-focused organization that values integrity and serves and benefits from a diverse community, I pledge to you that we’re committed to doing our part to make change and address inequality and injustice. I only regret that it took a nationwide movement to galvanize us to action. 

Our work will take place during a time of crisis on a scale not seen in many decades. The COVID-19 pandemic has forced us to postpone the wishes of many eligible children. We’re now limited in our ability to provide escape and respite at a time when many of our wish kids and families really need it, and that’s painful. And with the economic uncertainties stemming from the pandemic, we know we must prepare for the long, rocky recovery that lies ahead. 

These global pressures are weighing on us all, but unfortunately the most vulnerable members of our communities bear an unequal burden. With this lens of inequity and looking at our commitment to bringing hope and joy to every eligible child at a time when it’s even harder to do that, I feel a heightened sense of responsibility to our wish families and our Board of Directors, staff, volunteers, partners, and donors. 

I believe the only way forward is to look at this time as a defining moment for our chapter. We don’t seek to go back to where we were before each of these crises came and revealed strengths and weaknesses in our work and our mission. Instead, we must now think creatively about our wish granting, invite more partners into our work, and look at creating hope and joy in new ways. And we must ensure we’re inviting people to experience the power of a wish in a purposefully inclusive way. 

These days we all need more hope, strength, and yes, even joy. The question is, how do we share the power of a wish more broadly and more equitably? Here are some areas we’ll be looking at as we formulate an action plan: 

  • Our people: While our staff is diverse in some ways, it is not in others. I know we have work to do in order to achieve and maintain a more diverse staff. We also need to increase diversity on our Board of Directors and our advisory councils. That will take time, but we can also make immediate and ongoing investments in providing opportunities for learning, training, and sharing ideas that will lead to greater awareness, compassion, and knowledge within our existing workforce and leadership. 
     
  • Our wish granting and outreach: We seek to grant the wish of every eligible child in our diverse territory. To achieve this, we must do more in terms of outreach and partnership with underserved communities. There are inequities in health care delivery and medical outcomes that make wishes even more critical for more vulnerable populations. We need to recruit additional volunteers from diverse backgrounds, so that we can deliver the highest quality wishes in a timely way. 
      
  • Our partnerships and donors: We have a real opportunity to get a broader coalition of diverse businesses and individuals involved in our organization in a way that really benefits our mission and helps us achieve many of our diversity and inclusion goals, while inviting more people and organizations in to experience the power of a wish.  
     
  • Our storytelling: When people read about our wishes and engage with our mission, we want them to see themselves in our story. Everyone should be able to relate to the hope and joy that a wish brings. Each wish is as unique as the child who makes it, so we need to broaden our storytelling efforts to make sure we are sharing back a variety of experiences. 

Across all areas, we will need to secure the resources that we know it will take to implement our vision—and, even more importantly, to sustain it. We also need to discuss and define timeframes and benchmarks for success, so we can hold ourselves accountable to showing concrete change and growth. My hope is that we embed these goals so thoroughly into our values and operations that it just becomes the way we approach our work every day. 

This will be a real challenge amidst other challenges, and it will require more focus than ever before from me and other leaders of our chapter community. But with that focus, I believe real transformation can and will occur. I’ll do everything in my power to ensure that we emerge with a stronger commitment to a broader and richer mission and be the better for it. 

With gratitude, 

Betsy