FY23 Wish Report
In our 2023 fiscal year, we granted 307 wishes to children with critical illnesses in the greater Bay Area and assisted with 108 wishes from other chapters.
With the help of supporters like you, we achieved a 12% increase in wishes granted and a 30% increase in wish assists granted compared to our 2022 fiscal year. As we enter our 40th year of granting wishes to children in the greater Bay Area, we envision a future where our impact continues to grow!
2024 marks our 40th birthday as a chapter, and your unwavering support helped us achieve this milestone!
Granting a wish to a child battling a critical illness restores a piece of their childhood, allowing them to rediscover hope—a pivotal moment in their treatment and recovery journey.
While each wish is unique to each child, they typically fit within five categories: I wish to have, I wish to meet, I wish to go, I wish to be, and I wish to give.
Demographic data by ethnicity is self-reported and optional for each wish family. We are committed to championing diversity, equity, and inclusion in wish granting and continue to serve a diverse span of ethnic groups.
Wishes granted by county
Make-A-Wish Greater Bay Area was founded in 1984 and has fulfilled the wishes of more than 9,000 children in its 39-year history. The Greater Bay Area chapter serves 17 Northern California counties from Monterey County to the Oregon border: Alameda, Contra Costa, Del Norte, Humboldt, Lake, Mendocino, Napa, Marin, Monterey, San Benito, San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Cruz, Santa Clara, Siskiyou, Solano, and Sonoma.
*Map and ethnicity data do not include wishes granted through Make-A-Wish America’s Wish Exchange program, wish assists, or wish families who moved out of our territory during the wish process.
We are a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organization that relies on the generous contributions of individuals, corporate partnerships, planned gifts, and grants to make life-changing wishes possible. In-kind donations of goods and services also help finance our mission. In the 2022 fiscal year, our grant line included the COVID-19 PPP forgiveness loan in our funding. However, our 2023 fiscal year grant line indicates a substantial decrease in grant funding as the loan is no longer recognized. Our current grants are received from private foundations and now mirror percentages closer to one percent of the total funds raised, similar to the pre-pandemic period.
How our funds are spent
In our 2022 fiscal year, we still had limitations in wish granting due to ongoing travel restrictions, supply chain and service shortage issues, and wish postponement related to COVID-19. As more pandemic restrictions were lifted, we increased our spending on wish granting in our fiscal year 2023. It’s important to note that, during this time, we also experienced challenges of higher costs for travel, goods, and services due to inflation, increasing the overall cost of wish granting. In addition to inflation, another major contributor to the rise in wish costs was the increase in travel wishes, from 38% in FY22 to 71% in FY23.