My unsolicited opinion on the Make-A-Wish Foundation, in a nutshell: Excluding organizations that purposefully harm other human beings, I am not sure that there are many other organizations that are worse than the Make-A-Wish Foundation.
To explain: I identify as an Effective Altruist. I believe that saving lives is good, that doing good matters, and that saving more lives is better than saving less: if you have the opportunity to save five people, but you misuse your money so that you only save three people, then you have effectively killed two people.
I don't mean this in the criminal sense, that you ought to be locked up as though you had taken a gun and shot two people with it. If we are talking in terms of moral responsibility, however, then yes, you have killed two people, because you are culpable for their deaths. You could have done something to save them, and you did not.
My argument against MAW is very simple. According to the charity evaluator Giving What We Can, the Against Malaria Foundation is the most effective charity in the world, on the basis of lives saved per dollar. As GWWC explains on their website, an anti-malarial insecticidal bednet can be purchased for $5-7.50. This includes administrative and other costs, and works out to preventing one death for every $3,340 spent (remember: not every person who received a bednet would have died from malaria).
MAW's annual financial statement for 2014 reported that $277,334,525 had been spent on "total program and support services." I couldn't find the number of wishes that had been granted that year, but an article on MAW's website dating to October 2014 claims that the organization grants more than 14,000 wishes each year. Just as Against Malaria includes administrative and miscellaneous costs into the price of a bednet, so too must we do the same for MAW, which means that an average of $19,809 was spent per wish if we assume that 14,000 wishes were granted in 2014 (a conservative estimate, if anything).
If that money had instead been given to the Against Malaria Foundation, then six children could have been saved for every wish that MAW granted. Through inaction and the poor use of funds, MAW kills children. This is why I like that acronym; it brings to my mind the image of these children slipping through sharp teeth and being devoured by "that monster, death." I cannot think of anything that could be more appropriate.
When you consider the kid whose wish is being granted, each wish ultimately leaves the world with seven fewer children. This is unconscionable. I could perhaps understand it if we lived in a different world, but in this world we are familiar with the concept of the triage: when disaster strikes, we have to divide the survivors into (1) those who are likely to survive regardless of treatment, (2) those who are likely to die regardless of treatment, and (3) those for whom treatment might make a difference. Resources that could go to help group #3 cannot be diverted to the other two groups.
We live on a storm-tossed lifeboat. We are undergoing a perpetual natural disaster. People are dying, all over the world. If we are to consider ourselves good people, then we have to fight this. Among the ranks of so-called charities, there may be none worse than the MAW Foundation, which sees tragedy and, however unwittingly, turns one death into seven.
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