Make-A-Wish's National Office Granted $65.6M to Its Chapters. What Does That Teach Organizations With Local Affiliates?

Make-A-Wish America's public filing teaches a lesson that applies to any organization with chapters, affiliates, or campuses: the national return shows only part of the network, and the donor relationship is shared between national and local teams in ways a single filing cannot show. The Form 990 filed by the national office for the year ending August 31, 2025 reports total revenue of $136.8M (FY2025 Form 990, Part I, line 12). The national office reports that it "distributed $66,649,595 in cash and in-kinds to the chapters to grant wishes" during that year, and that it had 57 active chartered chapters at year-end (Part III, line 4a). Schedule I of the same filing lists every recipient: $1,007,275 of the total went to Make-A-Wish International, a separate organization, which leaves about $65.6M for chapter recipients (Schedule I, Part II). The chapters, in turn, paid the national office $26.0M in chapter assessments (Part VIII, line 2a). Each chapter is a separate nonprofit that files its own return, so none of the chapters' own fundraising appears here. This article reads the national filing line by line and turns the structure into steps a smaller network can use.

What does the FY2025 filing show at a glance?

The table below collects the figures a careful reader would pull from the national office's FY2025 Form 990 before interpreting any of them. The middle column is what the filing reports, with its part and line. The right column names the question each figure raises that only the network's own donor records could answer.

What is Make-A-Wish doing well?

Make-A-Wish grants wishes to children with critical illnesses. Its filing states the mission in one line: "together, we create life-changing wishes for children with critical illnesses" (Part I, line 1). The organization describes itself on its About page as "a collection of independently chartered nonprofit organizations," in which the national office in Phoenix "establishes guidelines for wish-granting standards, raises funds at a national level, provides legal support," and sets overall direction, while chapters, each with "its own board of directors, staff and volunteers," grant the wishes. The same page reports that a wish is granted every 33 minutes in the United States and its territories, an organization-reported figure.

The national office also builds national partnerships that local chapters could not build alone. In September 2025, Make-A-Wish America announced a national partnership in which "Salesforce will contribute $1 million annually" for three years, with Salesforce as the official donation match partner for Childhood Cancer Awareness Month that September (Make-A-Wish America, September 9, 2025). The same release reports more than 615,000 wishes granted worldwide since 1980, including more than 390,000 in the United States and its territories. The announcement came after the FY2025 fiscal year ended on August 31, 2025, so none of that partnership's money is in the figures in this article. Our reading is that a national match of this kind gives every chapter the same reason for a donor to give in the same month, which is one practical benefit of a national office.

What does the revenue path show?

Total revenue was $136.8M in FY2025, up from $131.0M the year before, and total expenses were $137.8M, up from $125.5M (Part I, lines 12 and 18, both columns). Expenses exceeded revenue by $1.0M in FY2025, after revenue exceeded expenses by $5.4M in FY2024 (Part I, line 19). The fiscal year ends on August 31 in each year shown, so the years can be compared directly.

About three-quarters of the rise in expenses sits in one line, by our arithmetic. Grants to organizations in the United States, the line that carries the grants to chapters, were $66.6M in FY2025 (Part IX, line 1), against $57.3M on the same line in FY2024 (FY2024 Form 990, Part IX, line 1), as trend context. That is a rise of about $9.4M, or about 76% of the $12.3M rise in total expenses. The prior year's filing also reported 58 active chapters, one more than the 57 at the end of FY2025. In plain terms, the national office granted more money to chapters for wishes, and that is the largest reason its own expenses rose.

The contributions line is entirely private. The filing reports no government grants (Part VIII, line 1e) and $7.1M of noncash gifts, which on this line means donated goods and other property, not donated services (Part VIII, line 1g). Fundraising expense of $21.7M against $105.4M of contributions comes to about 21 cents per contributed dollar, by our arithmetic. That ratio should not be compared with a single chapter's, because part of what the national office raises is passed to chapters for wishes, so its fundraising pays for money that is spent in other entities' budgets.

How does money move between the national office and the chapters?

Two lines on the filing describe the flow in each direction. From the chapters to the national office, Part VIII reports $26.0M of chapter assessments as program service revenue (Part VIII, line 2a). The filing does not define an assessment. Schedule I says the national office and its chapters "operate under individual chapter agreements" that set each chapter's rights and duties (Schedule I, Part IV). At about 19% of total revenue, chapter assessments are the national office's second-largest source after contributions (our arithmetic from Part I, lines 9 and 12). From the national office to the chapters, Schedule I lists about $65.6M in cash and in-kind grants to chapter recipients, after the $1,007,275 granted to Make-A-Wish International is set aside. The difference, about $39.7M by our arithmetic ($65,642,320 minus $25,969,028), is the net amount that moved from the national office to the chapters through these two lines. Schedule O adds one more flow: it explains most of the $5.0M of other changes in net assets (Part XI, line 9) as $4,984,166 of "passthrough revenue disbursed to the chapters," which is reported there rather than as a grant.

The same structure explains the functional expense split, which is easy to misread. Program services were $92.0M, about 67% of total expenses. Management and general was $24.1M, about 18%, and fundraising was $21.7M, about 16% (Part IX, line 25, columns B, C, and D). A national office spends part of its budget on work for the whole network, such as wish-granting standards, national fundraising, and legal support, which the About page lists among its roles, and the filing describes as support for chapters in running their wish programs (Part III, line 4a). The wishes themselves are granted by the chapters, whose own spending appears on their own returns and not in this filing.