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Most people have heard of the Make-A-Wish Foundation, one of many groups that grant wishes to terminally ill children. Nonprofits that make the wishes of dying adults come true are far less common. The Association of Wish Granting Organizations reports that of its 21 members, only Dream Foundation specifically serves adults. With a projected 2006 budget of $2.8 million in cash and donated services, Dream Foundation expects to grant about 750 wishes this year to adults with a variety of terminal diseases...
...Foundation asks prospective recipients, on their own or with help from hospice social workers, to complete an application detailing a preferred dream and an alternative. The applicant must meet the group's qualifications. It won't, for instance, grant wishes to people with chronic ailments who aren't terminally ill. Dreamers tend to come from low-income families that have little money for extras after illness has depleted whatever savings they had. When approved, a case gets assigned to one of 75 volunteer "dream captains," who organize the project and coax companies into donating products and services. Foundation staff members...
...dreams aren't always easy to grant. "I've heard 'no' many, many times," says Thomas Rollerson, a former sales executive who founded Dream Foundation in 1994. NASCAR racer Jeff Gordon, for instance, frequently grants wishes to terminally ill children but seldom to dying adults. Rollerson acknowledges that granting children's wishes is more appealing to most companies. "Kids are irresistible, and understandably so," he says...
...fund raising enables wish granters to fill a basic need: they give critically ill people a chance to make a choice that's not about their medical care or funeral arrangements. "When you're in the process of dying, you lose a little control every day," says Stevie Ball, CEO of the Fairygodmother Foundation. Dreams are an opportunity for the dreamers "to control one of the last pieces of their lives." Though all the groups vie for funding from individuals and companies, "it's the kind of business that really isn't competitive," Ball says. The world needs as many...
...Peoria, Ill...