How much did Make-A-Wish Foundation of America grant in FY2025?

Make-A-Wish Foundation of America reported 59 itemized grants totaling $60,305,049, out of $66,860,765 in total grant expense reported on the return in its FY2025 IRS filing.

Where is Make-A-Wish Foundation of America based?

Make-A-Wish Foundation of America is based in AZ.

Make-A-Wish Foundation of America

Foundation Dossiers Also receives grants — funding profile →

· Public charity

Make-A-Wish Foundation of America

Together, we create life-changing wishes for children with critical illnesses.

$67M

Granted FY2025still arriving

Grants FY2025still arriving

States reached

$2.7M

Largest

01What you fund

01100% classified

What you funded, over time

Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2017–2025.

Health$458MInternational$7.7MPhilanthropy$2.8MOther$0

02FY2025 · 59 grants

Where the money goes

Your grants by size, and where they go.

The 59 grants below total $60,305,049 — the rows itemised in this filing. The $66,860,765 headline is the total grant expense reported on the return, so the remaining $6,555,716 is giving the schedule does not break out: grants under the $5,000 itemisation floor, grants to individuals, and grants reported on other schedules. Every figure below describes the itemised rows only.

By grant size · FY2025

$50k–250k6 grants · $709k
$250k+53 grants · $60M

$978,998

Median grant

States reached

$126M

Total assets

Largest grants
Recipient	Amount
MAWF SOUTHERN FLORIDA	$2,688,248
MAWF METRO NEW YORK AND WESTERN NEW YORK	$2,658,915
MAWF ILLINOIS	$2,253,812
MAWF NEW JERSEY	$2,113,100
MAWF OHIO KENTUCKY AND INDIANA	$2,089,733
MAWF CENTRAL AND NORTHERN FLORIDA	$2,010,767
MAWF GREATER LOS ANGELES	$1,962,830
MAWF GREATER BAY AREA	$1,843,907
MAWF NORTH TEXAS	$1,786,989
MAWF COLORADO	$1,732,875
MAWF MISSOURI AND KANSAS	$1,524,071
MAWF WISCONSIN	$1,520,518
MAWF MICHIGAN	$1,485,288
MAWF GEORGIA	$1,461,102
MAWF ARIZONA	$1,397,379

02The need

Do your dollars go where the need is?

Each grant placed by the hardship in its grantee’s ZIP, then read against the area’s typical level.

show:

Your human-services grants (FY17–25, $41.4M) land where the poverty rate runs at 11%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 98% of those dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Most of your grants land in higher-need ZIPs.

grant to an above-average-need area below average· circle size = grant amount

Matched: human-services grants are those whose grantee’s IRS cause code is Human Services. Placed by people below the poverty linein the grantee’s ZIP, averaged from the tracts in that ZIP; grantee ZIP can differ from where services are delivered.

Which US states your grants reach

US grants placed by each grantee’s ZIP, which can differ from where services are actually delivered. Need from public data — U.S. Census/ACS, CDC PLACES, Eviction Lab, USDA — shown as context about the area, never attributed to your giving.

03Your edge

repeat funding

Who you back again

Which organizations you funded more than once, and which you funded a single time. Each grantee is matched to its own filings.

100%of every dollar goes to organizations you’ve funded before.

$468M · 65 repeat orgs$0 to everyone else

65 repeat relationships — 59 still active in FY2025, 6 since wound down.

How the two cohorts compare

Re-uppedFunded once

Organizations

Total granted

$468M

Still filing today

91%

New vs renewed · share of each year

In FY2025, 100% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $0 went to new ones.

RenewedFirst-time

Where new relationships form · theme of each grantee’s first grant

HealthHuman ServicesPhilanthropyArts & CultureOther

First-time = a grantee’s first year in your filing window; renewed = funded in an earlier year too. As a portfolio matures the renewed share naturally climbs — once funded, an org stays “renewable” — so the signal is the years that buck it (a new-grantee intake wave). The earliest year is left-censored: relationships that predate the data read as “new.” Theme is the grantee’s IRS cause.

Backed again, and grew

MF
MAKE-A-WISH FOUNDATION OF OH KY & IN
9× · 2017–2025 · $23M · revenue +39%
MF
MAKE-A-WISH FOUNDATION OF METRO NEW YORK AND WESTERN NEW YORK
9× · 2017–2025 · $22M · revenue +56% · 29% of their budget
MF
MAKE-A-WISH FOUNDATION OF ILLINOIS INC
9× · 2017–2025 · $21M · revenue +12%

Funded once

Repeat = funded in two or more distinct years; growth and survival are read from each grantee’s own subsequent IRS filings.

04Your field

The map has a center of gravity: the average direction from the rest of the sector toward the organizations the foundation funds — the shape of its giving. Scoring every nonprofit along that direction surfaces the ones that look most like the portfolio. These are the closest matchesthat aren’t grantees — a resemblance in what they say they do, not a recommendation.

Make-a-Wish Foundation of America

Together, we create life-changing wishes for children with critical illnesses.

—

Wishing Star Foundation

Wishing star foundation's mission is to provide hope and lasting memories for children who are terminal or battling a life-threatening illness.

Unclassified

Indiana Wish Inc

The mission of indiana wish is to grant wishes to indiana children ages 3 -18 diagnosed with a life-threatening illness.

Health

A Child's Wish of Louisiana Inc

To grant wishes to and otherwise act for the benefit of children suffering from terminal or life theatening illness or disease.

—

Little Wishes

Little Wishes grants the immediate and ongoing wishes of chronically and critically ill hospitalized children to ease their discomfort and bring them moments of joy.

Human Services

A Special Wish Foundation Inc

To grant the wishes of seriously / terminally ill children.

—

Wish of a Lifetime

Wish of A Lifetime's (WOL) mission is to spark hope and joy in the hearts of older adults by fulfilling their dreams through personalized experiences that promote healthy and purposeful aging. We share these stories to inspire those of all…

Human Services

A Special Wish Foundtion - Central Ohio

Grant special wishes to children with a life-threatening medical problem.

Human Services

One Simple Wish Inc

One Simple Wish empowers you to restore hope and happiness to children impacted by foster care, abuse and neglect.

Human Services

A Wish With Wings Inc

Organization grants wishes to children with life threatening conditions.

—

Montana Hope Project Inc

Granting wishes for montana children living with critical illnesses.

Health

The Dream Factory Inc - Headquarters

Granting of dreams to critically and/or chronically ill children.

—

For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Make-a-Wish Foundation of Missouri and Kansas and the most unlike its peers is Make-a-Wish Foundation Guam. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.

Your grantees are a median of 40 years old; the field is 16. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.

The field is 22% startups (under 5 years old) — 0% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.

Closures · last 5 years

The orgs you fund almost never close — 3% lost their exemption, against 13% of the field you don’t fund.

orgs you fund

3%2/64

the rest of the field

13%

240,394/1,819,501

Age = years since IRS exemption (a founding proxy). “Closed” = auto-revocation for 3 years of non-filing — a floor on closure, not proof, and bigger established orgs lapse least. Association, not causation.

04the grantee network

63 grantees tracked through their own filings, 2017–2025.

Each one resolved to its own IRS returns and tracked year by year — your grant beside their revenue from every source. Association, dated; never a causal claim.

Counted here: distinct organizations you funded across 2017–2025, not grant rows in a single year — so this will not match the grant count on the cover. 63 of the 65 grantees resolved in that span have returns of their own we could reconcile; the rest are funded organizations whose filings we could not track year by year.

Load-bearing (≥25% of a budget)

Early backer (in before they grew)

59/63

Grantees still filing

52/63

Grew since you first funded

Where your money sits — by cause, then by grantee

Health$252,069,990Other$155,684,690Human Services$41,388,661Philanthropy$16,608,342Arts & Culture$2,422,249

Each org by its size and your share of it — top-left is where you’re load-bearing

Go grantee by grantee — a decade per org, and how each moved after you funded them

A decade per grantee — revenue shaded, your grants as bars, all rows on one timeline.

The grantmakers whose grantees overlap with yours far more than size alone predicts. Each orbits closer the stronger the alignment; the arcs between them show where they also fund each other. Here it reads as a tightly interlocked camp — most of these funders back each other's grantees too.

Car Donation FoundationMN85.3× affinity38 shared granteesties to 11 of 11Hover any node to trace its alignments.Compare side by side →

Open a dossier: Car Donation Foundation · Inspire Brands Foundation Inc · Jpmorgan Chase Foundation · The Blackbaud Giving Fund · Enterprise Holdings Foundation · Charities Aid Foundation America · The Pfizer Foundation Inc · Dutch Bros Foundation · Edward Jones Foundation · Give Back Foundation · Assurant Foundation · Lamb Weston Charitable Foundation

Affinity is a Gamma-Poisson posterior co-funding rate, re-centered on the typical rate, so thin evidence shrinks toward no signal. A research starting point: overlap is association, not proof of shared intent.

Government reliance of your grantees

Every dot is one organization Make-A-Wish Foundation of America funds. Left–right is the share of its income from government; up–down is the share from you. Bigger dots raise more. Filter to federal or a single department — and drag the year to watch it move.

2024

’20’21’22’23’24’25

no gov moneyreceives it· size = income

8get no government money at all

9report government grants on their 990 we could not trace to a source (not plotted)

0rely on government for over half their income

⤢ axis zoomed · 0–5%

typical government reliance, FY20–25

Government income is each org’s traced federal awards (USASpending — grants and contracts) plus state payments (open checkbooks) as a share of its total revenue (IRS Form 990); the self-reported government-grant line (990 line 1e) is carried for cross-check: a grantee that reports government grants we could not trace to a source is left off the chart rather than shown as receiving none. An association, not a claim that your grant caused the public funding. Coverage is precision-first — a floor, not a census; state records exist for 9 states, so a grantee outside them shows no state figure (dimmed) rather than a false zero. Federal award amounts are obligations, which can span years, so a single-year share is indicative. 990 filings lag 12–24 months.

More from the funding graph

The unnamed billions

grants reported with no recipient in the public record

The regranting layer

51% of grant dollars land in the regranting layer

The DAF merry-go-round

$9.7B circulates between donor-advised funds

The camps

funders cluster by geography, not ideology

By state

where grant money is based, and what stays home

State money flows

the interactive map of money crossing state lines