24 / 44
24
I
Nonprofit
Performance
Magazine
From the beginning, I wanted to base the
foundation on accountability, integrity, and
transparency. I wanted to make sure that
every dollar that was donated went directly
to the mission, so none of the board members
received any type of salary, including myself,
the first president and CEO. The media
picked up on that: here is a foundation where
they are not thinking about how to make a
profit, but everything is going directly to the
mission.
Ballou:
In a nonprofit, you don’t distribute
the profit to the shareholders because you
don’t have any. It’s really a tax-exempt charity.
Nonprofits generate profit for the cause.
Many people give up because they can’t easily
find people who agree with their idea.Tenacity
is needed to make it work. Everybody has
an idea. Only three out of 100 people will
do anything about the idea. Then 90% of
those 3% fail because they are not persistent
enough to actually follow through and not let
other people rob them of their dream. You
had people tell you it wouldn’t work, but you
knew it would.What conviction inside of you
drove you to complete this?
Shankwitz:
Our mutual friend, Greg Reid,
taught me a word a few years ago: stickability.
While I was putting the foundation together
in Phoenix, I learned how many children in
the children’s hospital there had leukemia.
In the 1980s, leukemia was a death sentence
for children. I realized that there were other
children out there who needed to have their
wish granted. Unfortunately, starting the
foundation was all about terminality, and the
children did not survive. Fortunately, today
about 70% of children survive leukemia
and the majority of cancers that are life-
threatening illnesses.
Our national board members came up with
a great idea about 20 years ago to change our
mission from terminal to life-threatening be-
cause, through the graces of God and modern
medicine, more and more children were sur-
viving. It was a great decision for the current
management of the Make-A-Wish Founda-
tion because that way they could impact a lot
more children, granting a lot more wishes.
Ballou:
Another good leadership principle is
developing a consensus with your team, your
board. The Make-A-Wish Foundation will
supersede you for who knows how long; it
will go on indefinitely because it is an idea
that you have transformed into an institution
which has sustainability. Are there chapters
of Make-A-Wish around the world?
Shankwitz:
Yes, there are now 62 national
chapters and 36 international chapters on
five continents. During our first year, we told
our board members that someday we were
going to be national and in-
ternational. They all laughed
at me, but I think I had the
last laugh on that one.
Ballou:
I commend you for
that. Leaders are people of
influence, and you influenced
that to happen by your
power, your presence, and
your stickability, continuing
to make a difference in the
world.
Bob Proctor says that he
doesn’t have the word retire
in his vocabulary. A few
years ago, he was asked when he was going to
slow down. He said, “I am 77, and I have to
speed up. I have more to do.”You and I are in
another phase. I am in my third career. I had
my career as a merchant and as a conductor
for 40 years. The last ten years I have been
working as a leadership strategist, helping
people launch their ideas and build strong
teams and strong organizations as they build
their skillset.
I commend you for your journey and not only
for your wisdom but also your commitment
to that passion. Make-A-Wish has gener-
ated money to continue doing its work, but
the profit is people have benefited in many
ways. You are in a new phase
of your career. I heard a ru-
mor that there is a book and
a movie coming out.
Shankwitz:
I’m so fortunate.
This is my fourth career. My
first career was in the Air
Force. My second was at
Motorola. My third was as
a police officer for 42 years.
When you retire, what do
you do? There are not a lot
of jobs for an ex-homicide
detective.
Greg
Reid
started me on a whole new
career path with speaking
five years ago. That led to
Hollywood calling to say
that they wanted to do a
movie on my life, the movie
Wish Man. The screenplay
has been finalized and
approved. Filming starts
in April 2017. I am pretty
excited about all of that. I am flattered and
humbled that they want to do this, but they
have kept me involved the whole way. And I
have had a lot of fun doing that.
My book
Wishman
is
out. It is my personal
journey from five years
old to what helped me
create the Make-A-Wish
Foundation.
Ballou:
What would
you define as the most
important
leadership
decision that you showed
in this initiative?
Shankwitz:
I realized
in later years that I was
more of a dictator than a
leader with our board members. We had so
many far-flung ideas, but I demanded that
we continue the mission we had established
at the beginning. It must have been right
because our original charter and by-laws
are still in effect 36 years later. One of the
biggest decisions we made is that nobody was
being paid; we are all novices in this. It was a
grassroots effort. We decided we had to start
hiring professionals in the nonprofit world.
As Greg Reid says, you hire the experts, and
none of us are the experts. I was very good
in my police career. Another person was very
good in their career. But we were not experts
in nonprofits. We first started to pay a salary
when we hired those experts. I think that