Make-A-Wish

Orr Group undertook a planned giving assessment to evaluate Make-A-Wish’s current planned giving structure and capacity in order to increase its annual revenue.

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Situation

Make-A-Wish is a national, federated nonprofit organization dedicated to creating life-changing wishes for children with critical illnesses. The belief that a wish experience can be a game-changer for a child with critical illness drives Make-A-Wish to make their donated resources go as far as possible. Make-A-Wish’s wish-granting impacts everyone involved – kids, volunteers, donors, sponsors, medical professionals, and communities. At the national and chapter levels, Make-A-Wish works hard to realize their vision of granting the wish of every eligible child

In 2020, Make-A-Wish restructured its Revenue Services and Development efforts to organize the team for efficiencies and strengthen major gift fundraising. Since the restructuring process did not include a deep assessment of their planned giving efforts, Make-A-Wish engaged Orr Group to undertake a comprehensive planned giving assessment to understand the potential, strengths and gaps of Make-A-Wish’s current state at the national and chapter levels. We set goals to build roadmaps for a robust and proactive planned giving program and a national-chapter structure that would enhance planned giving efforts enterprise-wide.

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Solution

Orr Group’s three-month planned giving assessment included a discovery process of Make-A-Wish’s current infrastructure, a landscape analysis of four comparable federated organizations and their planned giving strategies and organizational structures, interviews with key National Make-A-Wish leadership and stakeholders, and several chapter cohort sessions to understand the national-chapter relationship. 

Based on our findings, Orr Group set actionable recommendations for Make-A-Wish to strengthen its planned giving by leveraging the strength and reach of their enterprise model and realizing the full potential of their existing relationships. Our final roadmap included steps to centralize and standardize key planned giving functions and resources at the National level, revise their team structure to grow planned giving intentions enterprise-wide, and to streamline their moves management tracking to stay on track with planned giving prospects.

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Impact

Following the completion of our planned giving assessment, Make-A-Wish expanded its partnership with Orr Group to provide outsourced planned giving administrative support to implement our recommendations in assessing and tracking the status of planned gift expectancies. As part of this work, we collaborated to determine the potential planned gift revenue for FY21 and into FY22.