EP 89: The Magic of Make-A-Wish Colorado with CEO Scott Dishong

This conversation is for informational and educational purposes only and is not professional advice.

Positioning review: Content reviewed for positioning compliance. All references to Handbid are experiential, describing the vendor relationship with Make-A-Wish Colorado's event. Fundraising and event advice comes naturally from the guest's firsthand nonprofit leadership experience. No prescriptive financial, legal, or professional advice present. Minor cleanup of filler words and transcription artifacts.

Jeff: Welcome to Elevate Your Event, your favorite podcast for transforming fundraising events. Join us weekly for expert tips and creative ideas to make your next event a standout success. Today, we're diving into the magic of Make-A-Wish Colorado with CEO Scott Dishong. From granting hundreds of life-changing wishes to reimagining fundraising events, Scott shares the power of impactful storytelling, donor engagement, and creating unforgettable experiences. Plus, we'll hear about some of the most unique wishes ever granted -- yes, even a robotic dragon. So grab a seat, turn up the volume, and get ready for an inspiring conversation on fundraising, leadership, and making dreams come true.

Jeff: All right, welcome back to the Elevate Your Event podcast. We talk about all the various ways you can make your next fundraising event better or just maybe make your nonprofit better as well. We've got everybody in the studio today. We have no remote guests and we have a very special guest. But first, let's introduce the Handbid team here. We've got Elise Druckenmiller.

Elise: Fresh off the plane from Las Vegas.

Jeff: Oh, did you win money? Did you lose money?

Elise: I won money.

Jeff: Look at that.

Elise: And my daughter won gymnastics.

Jeff: It's a win-win. Jeff Porter, CEO of Handbid. And then we've got our very good friend, Scott Dishong, from the Make-A-Wish Foundation -- CEO of Make-A-Wish Colorado.

Scott: I don't want to make anybody think that I'm running all of Make-A-Wish. Make-A-Wish Colorado.

Jeff: Thanks, Scott, for joining us. So tell us a little bit -- how you got to be the CEO of Make-A-Wish Colorado and kind of what you've done in the past, and then we'll dig in. I'm sure we've got a lot of questions for you.

Scott: I started in 2019. I still kind of feel like I'm living a dream because I don't think anybody grows up thinking, "Hey, I'm going to be the CEO of one of the coolest organizations in the world," which is Make-A-Wish. So I spent 12 years at the American Cancer Society in a variety of different roles, did a bunch of things over those 12 years, and then literally just got a call from a recruiter that said the founder and CEO of Make-A-Wish Colorado, Joan Mazak, was retiring. Would I have interest in learning more? And so of course I clicked yes, and then went through a long process to fool the board of directors into thinking I was capable of running Make-A-Wish Colorado.

Jeff: Oh, you are.

Scott: We'll see about that. We haven't burned it down yet. It's five years, and it's been a really cool five years. I learned a lot of stuff about Make-A-Wish even that I didn't know going into the process -- even just interviewing for the job and then starting. Just how magical of a place it is to be. And so I'm just so happy that I get to do this every day.

Jeff: I love it. And I know my kids have been involved through the high schools here in Colorado and Wish Week. And as much as I'm in the nonprofit space, I was dense for a while going, "Wish Week? Which week?" And then I was like, "Oh, Make-A-Wish. I got it."

Scott: Sure, I'll donate to that.

Jeff: I don't want to donate to some kid who's wishing that his parents are buying a BMW or something. This is real stuff.

Scott: I'm glad I wasn't the only one that had the same realization. Same for me. I've got two kids in Douglas County schools, one at Ponderosa and one at Legend High School. They were both big Wish Week schools. So same thing -- my kids would come home on a Monday and say, "I need 20 bucks for a T-shirt," and then come back on Tuesday and say, "I need $10 for this." And so I'm so happy because now I get to be a part of it. It's such a cool part of what Make-A-Wish Colorado does. Our Wish Week program and our Kids for Wish Kids program ultimately helps us grant one out of every three wishes in the state of Colorado. And it's all student-led, all student-driven by student government kiddos at all of these schools. So it's a great way to teach kids philanthropy and support Make-A-Wish Colorado at the same time.

Jeff: That's awesome. So let's talk about scale here for a second. How many wishes is Colorado granting on an annual basis?

Scott: That's a great question. This past year, we did just around 380 wishes for kids from Colorado. When I started, we had our Make-A-Wish Colorado Wish Kids, and then what we call Wish Assist. That's any kid that wants to come to Colorado to experience their wish here. So last year we did over 75 Wish Assists, which I'm super passionate about. I think if you want to wish to ski, that should happen in the state of Colorado at one of our beautiful mountains. And we're so blessed to have great partners in that realm. So about 450 or so wishes per year between our kids and kids that we're bringing to the state to participate in a wish.

Jeff: That's incredible. So let's talk about some of these wishes. I'm sure they run the gamut from "I want to meet Justin Simmons on the Broncos" -- probably a little easier -- to "I want to meet Taylor Swift." So how do you handle the wishes that maybe scale beyond what Colorado can do?

Scott: That's a great thing about Make-A-Wish. We talk about the federated model. We've got a national organization that we're a part of, but still very local in nature. We've got a board of directors here in Colorado that oversees myself and our organization. And then we've got this umbrella, Make-A-Wish America. So that's nice -- we've got relationships not just with Make-A-Wish America but our counterparts across the country. So if someone wants to meet their favorite Chief -- here in Broncos country, we don't like that -- but that's not our job to determine what the wish is. And I hate to say this: the Chiefs do an amazing job of wish granting. We'll work with our counterparts in Kansas City to make that happen. We just had a kid from New York this past weekend. The wish was to go to the National Western Stock Show, which is awesome.

Jeff: Did you tell them how cold it typically is?

Scott: Well, they're from New York. They weren't coming from Florida at least. We try to make sure they've got everything they need to be bundled up. But yeah, we do have this connectivity between Make-A-Wish America and the other chapters, which helps us grant wishes that we didn't think were possible.

Jeff: And for certain corporations -- I was recently on a flight through Orlando, and there was a Wish family on there with their T-shirts and stuff. So I'd imagine the airlines are also super cooperative.

Scott: Pretty much every major airline is a big supporter of Make-A-Wish. Here in Colorado, we're lucky that United, Southwest, and Frontier all have a big presence in the Denver market. So we get a lot of what we call in-kind, right? In the nonprofit world, very important for us. And great storytelling opportunity too for our airline partners. On a recent Avs wish, Southwest helped us get Bernie to the gate so that when the family was coming off the plane, Bernie was there waiting. There are really cool things like that we get to do with our partners here in Denver.

Jeff: You must walk around with like a bundle of Kleenex in your pocket.

Scott: So my team knows this. They bought me seven pairs of sunglasses last Christmas, because when they walk by my office or when I go to a meeting and I know it's going to be positive and emotional, I typically take my sunglasses and then I'll put them on when tears start coming down my face. And I always forget my sunglasses in my car. So they bought me literally multiple pairs strategically placed around the office, because it is such an emotional organization and just so positive. I got to go out and be a part of that -- watch this family get off the plane. They're originally from Colorado, that's why they love the Avs. And to watch these young kids get off the plane and see Bernie. And there just happened to be a gentleman at another gate that had his dog with him that went up and started sniffing Bernie. So the kids get off the plane and Bernie's playing with a little puppy dog outside their gate. It just makes for a magical kind of introduction -- even just "Welcome to Colorado."

Jeff: What's the age range of the kids that are able to ask for wishes?

Scott: We focus on kids that are two and a half to 18, so really almost into adulthood. It runs the gamut. We do a ton of Disney wishes. They've been a partner really since the original wish in 1980 -- a wish that involved the Phoenix Fire Department. A kiddo got to go to Disneyland. The Phoenix Fire Department picked him up at the hospital, took him to the airport, flew to Disney. And then the Anaheim Fire Department picked him up and took him to Disneyland. So they're ingrained in what we do. An amazing partner.

Jeff: So all these wishes obviously require funds. Talk a little bit about fundraising -- maybe throughout your career. Has it been pretty typical, like when you were at ACS versus Make-A-Wish, or does Make-A-Wish do things dramatically differently?

Scott: I think for us here, Make-A-Wish Colorado is a little bit different even than other chapters in Make-A-Wish, just because of our Kids for Wish Kids program and the fact that they do such an amazing job of helping us raise money from that grassroots level. It's $5 and $10 at a time. Kids will go out, take a big five-gallon bucket and pass it around during an assembly and raise a couple thousand dollars in change. And then that aggregates over 150-plus schools. So it feels very grassroots here at Make-A-Wish Colorado. We run the gamut from our Kids for Wish Kids program, to major gifts and planned giving, which is a big part of what we do and is getting bigger every day. And then what we've tried to do is scale back and do really signature big events, because we know that space -- especially going into COVID and coming out of COVID, two different things -- we really wanted to focus on a signature event and use that event to get people engaged in the organization, tell a story, get them excited about what we do, let them have a good time, and then hopefully they want to get involved in Make-A-Wish Colorado.

Jeff: And obviously, that's the event where we got connected.

Scott: Yeah, yeah.

Jeff: Handbid has powered that event for you. But it's interesting because for big organizations like that, I think throughout my nonprofit career, there's always been this belief -- which I think is kind of inaccurate -- that you start out running events because you're so small, that's the only thing you know how to do. And then you evolve into sponsorships and major gifts and events go away. But you brought up that when you came on board, you wanted to revitalize that event and make it a signature event because it's a great entry point for building new donor relationships.

Scott: Exactly right. I think that's where the issue is. It's not "Are these events still effective?" It's what's happening after the event to make them effective. Raising a bunch of money in one night is always awesome. We love to do that. But it's really the engagement and the relationships that are built and the connections you make through the planning and execution of that event, and then afterwards, that really make it a success or not. Even small events that we've done -- we just did a little concert-style event with Number 38 here in Colorado. And we got to meet a couple of country music stars, up-and-comers. And those connections -- just that, for us as an organization -- are awesome. Because when one of those guys is a big deal in five years and we've got wish kids wishing to meet them, we've already got a connection. We can text them and say, "Hey, remember meeting me in Denver five years ago? We've got a kid that wants to meet you now at Red Rocks." So you've got to look at it from a holistic view, not just a point in time or a moment in time, and say, "This is certainly a fundraiser for tonight, but what else is it going to open up for our organization and most importantly our kids moving forward?"

Jeff: I will say, going into that event last year as a patron -- not even as your vendor -- I was just absolutely blown away with the engagement of the crowd. And there was good entertainment there for sure.

Scott: When we started kind of visualizing -- we had an event called Wish Night when we were going into COVID. The first decision I ever made as the CEO of Make-A-Wish Colorado was to move our Wish Night from February of 2020 to May of 2020. So if you're remembering the timeline, that didn't work out so hot.

Jeff: Pandemics.

Scott: But the reason was we wanted to put it in a time frame that was right for Denver, for Colorado, so we could get more people there. And so we made that decision. It didn't work out well at that time. But then we had ultimately two years to think about -- when we're able to do an event again, especially a big event, what do we want it to be? And for me, I grew up in Nebraska. I love country music. I love cowboy boots. I love a good party. And so I was like, "Let's just do a party with a purpose." At the American Cancer Society, we had Cattle Barons Ball up in northern Colorado, which has been a massive success for a lot of years. And so I tried to say, "How do we do something that people want to come to?" We've all been to fundraising events. You've got your event that's just fun, it's amazing -- something you want to come to. You leave an event like yours and you're like, "I can't wait till next year," instead of, "Oh, that was nice," and then you just forget about it.

Jeff: "I can't wait until next year because I won a bunch of money at your event on some horses."

Scott: And then turned it into a condo rental up in Grand Lake. But it's that kind of thing. You leave an event and you have one feeling or another. "Hey, that was a nice event" or "That's an event I want to go to next year." And even better, I'm going to tell my friends who weren't there -- which I've done for you guys. We've got people now that I've been talking to for the last six, seven months. Like, "We're going to this event because it's a lot of fun."

Jeff: So that's what you want. So what was the event before?

Scott: It was Wish Night. A black-tie, sit-down gala. It was nice. I never actually went, but I know the team did an amazing job. But coming out of COVID, I think it was the right thing for Make-A-Wish pre-COVID, but coming out, people wanted to get out in droves.

Jeff: We experienced that too.

Scott: And I'd say that black-tie, formal gala -- more and more of those are going away.

Jeff: I think you were right to foresee that coming out of COVID, people wanted to get out, but they didn't want to get dressed up. They've been in yoga pants and sweatpants for three years. You've been attending galas a year with your feet up on the table watching the livestream, and now you're asking me to put my tux back on. I don't even know if I fit into that thing.

Scott: Exactly right. We saw a lot of what they called the "un-gala." And then there were the "boots and bling" or the "denim and diamonds" and whatever. You want to go a little classier than those, maybe, but at the same time, really embrace what the market gives you. Colorado is just not a tuxedo market.

Jeff: No.

Scott: For us, obviously, we're a Western town. You have to embrace that and own it and love it. And I do, so that works out well for me.

Jeff: When they were looking for a CEO, they're like, "Find a Western guy. Someone who likes cows and boots."

Scott: It took me a little while to sell everybody. Even our team was like, "Oh my God, I think this guy's crazy." But I was hopeful. Hope's not a strategy, but I really thought -- and I think our team ultimately came to realize -- once again, if you do something that's fun and people want to come to it, they want to go back.

Jeff: And then you're talking about -- because this is where you and I have spent a lot of time conversing, about our own events. Part of planning an event is onerous. It's gross, it's dirty, it's nasty. But at the upper level, just the planning of it -- we spent at least 15 or 20 minutes before this podcast talking about which country bands can we book for our events.

Scott: It's so much fun. What can we afford? Can we get someone to discount? Who do you know? Can we get a two-for-one? Let's change event dates and do them back to back.

Jeff: It's okay to take these risks and have the conversations.

Scott: They can pan out. And the venues that we collectively use that are connected to AEG, who is a huge presence here in Colorado and an amazing sponsor for you guys -- it also gives you a lot of flexibility.

Jeff: It does.

Scott: Nothing against hotels and what they do, but you don't have a lot of flexibility in what you can do in a hotel ballroom. If you're doing a concert-style event -- and that's what the first part of what we decided was, "Let's have a concert." Something people want to come to. So we started looking at venues. We could do something at Fiddler's like you guys do, which is awesome. We could do something at the world-famous Grizzly Rose. So we could do something at all these amazing places. And then we literally got lucky. Subaru has been a massive supporter of Make-A-Wish, not just here in Colorado, but across the country for a long time. And they're a big sponsor of AEG and the Mission Ballroom. We were walking around visiting the Mission Ballroom and said, "This is perfect for what we want to do," but I didn't think we could swing it, especially on the first one. I was trying to sell people that we could actually do this event. And then Subaru gets a free night to use with their sponsorship. AEG was super kind to say, "Let's use it in a different way and let Make-A-Wish use that night." So it's a win-win. Subaru gets to be our venue sponsor for a sponsorship they've already got. We've built this great relationship with AEG here in Colorado. And then we get to have our event at this spot that's perfect for what we do -- really high-level music and entertainment. We don't have a ton of tables. It's not a sit-down event. It's: go check out our amazing silent auction, get ready for our amazing live auction, and then listen to some music.

Jeff: And the food was great.

Scott: Tacos. Once again, I want it to be simple. Cowboys love tacos. Or barbecue sandwiches. You don't want the piece of rubber chicken and the raspberry vinegar on top of the salad. When we talked about moving from black tie and sit-down dinner, that was another thing. I was like, "Let's just do something simple." People want to come and eat good food, but you're not going to have people knifing on a steak while they're standing up.

Jeff: The classic steak.

Scott: It's worked out perfect. Great venue and an awesome partner for us. You come in, you pick the band, you set the vision, you lay it out, and then you have an amazing team behind you that makes it all happen.

Jeff: And none of it's possible without that team.

Scott: I've got an amazing team here at Make-A-Wish Colorado. They say surround yourself with people that are a lot smarter than you are. And I've done that in every single way -- my wife, my family, my team. I get to take absolutely zero credit. There's a vision for what I thought was going to be successful. But then Kelly Kendall Events comes alongside us and really supports what we do. Lauren, our chief development officer, she's amazing -- she executed and built the partnerships. So I wish I could take credit for any of it, but it's really having an amazing team. And on the flip side, what makes Make-A-Wish Colorado exceptional is that our program team and our fundraising team and our operations -- the really three sides of any nonprofit organization -- they all love each other and work together to execute, whether it's a wish on the program side or an event on the development side. There's not that invisible line between program and mission. They've got a lot of partnership, and it's what's made our Kids for Wish Kids program strong. It's what's made our event really strong. When we're there, our entire team's there, no matter what their role is, having a good time and also supporting the organization.

Jeff: I was blown away with the quality of your volunteers. They showed up on time, they were confident. They were great.

Scott: I'm excited to work with them again this year.

Jeff: So are you trying to franchise this? Is Whiskey, Wine and Wishes going to grow to other Make-A-Wish chapters?

Scott: It already has, which I'm proud of. And I wish I could take a little off the top, but really it's a gift to the world. Tennessee is doing something very similar. Texas has an event that's pretty similar.

Jeff: Should have copyrighted that.

Scott: I know. Maybe it's not too late. At least in 20 years, those chapters that are still doing Whiskey, Wine and Wishes know that it started here.

Jeff: Our paying Colorado 5% royalty.

Scott: I won't even take the 5%. I just want our team to get that credit for what they built. And that's the cool thing about Make-A-Wish -- we're always helping each other. I'm sure I've stolen a lot of ideas from other organizations, specifically other chapters. So please steal ours.

Jeff: It's the best form of flattery. And I'm the vision guy. I get the eye rolls from my staff all the time. I'm going to put myself in Scott's shoes and build a network. I want 10 of these around the country because then we're going to find 10 country artists and we're going to have the Make-A-Wish Foundation tour.

Scott: Exactly right. We did an event for a number of years for Diamond Resorts. Their CEO is a country music fan. So he went and got himself his own ambassadors -- Toby Keith, Colt Ford, Jake Owen, Lee Brice. And then he shipped around a bunch of acoustic guitars and they would sign them, and then they'd show up at his properties and play these little intimate concerts. It was amazing.

Jeff: That's the fun part of it.

Scott: Just the connections, the relationships that you make through the process and the journey of an event -- you meet so many cool people along the way. Our first band at Whiskey, Wine and Wishes was Shane Smith and the Saints. It was right as Yellowstone was super popular and they were selling out Red Rocks. Right as that was happening, we got Shane Smith and the Saints. They did it essentially for their cost, which coming out of COVID and the fact that they hadn't been able to tour for a long time was awesome and unheard of. But they did it because Peyton Manning was involved in the event. He was our first-ever Wish Hero. What country artist doesn't love Peyton Manning? He's so supportive of what we do. And then, once you're part of our organization, whether it's for a day or a year or forever, we're true partners. So we worked with another partner, Southwest Airlines, connected them, and then Shane Smith and the Saints ended up doing a Live at 35 -- they actually played on a Southwest Airline at 35,000 feet.

Jeff: Is that what my daughter had to go to after three speeding tickets, or is that different?

Elise: That's Alive at 25, Jeff. Way different situations.

Jeff: How do you get on that plane? That's cool.

Scott: Random country music stars playing on Southwest Airlines at 35,000 feet. A concert at 35,000 feet. Really because Southwest is such a great partner of ours here in Colorado, and we were able to connect their teams. When Shane Smith left to their next gig, we didn't want it to be the last time that we connected with them and gave back in some way because they supported us. We really believe in relationship-based fundraising. Everything we do is relationship-based. We try to be a good partner.

Jeff: It's clear that -- we started this conversation with how do you engage your donors after the event. And we've gone into a discussion about how you're leveraging all of your relationships -- not just your donors, it's your sponsors, your employees. And you're ingraining that in them and they're leveraging relationships within each other to make such an impressive event.

Scott: And then after the event, think about our wishes. Every wish is an event ultimately. Especially our local wishes. What we didn't know going into COVID was how that was going to impact our organization. We're an organization that typically 75% of our kids wish to travel or if they wish to meet someone, they have to travel. We pivoted really quickly. We started getting a lot of wishes for backyard makeovers and huge play sets. Listen, I'm not a construction guy. I can screw in a light bulb, but that's about as far as I get. So we had to pivot and immediately go to our partners -- PCL Construction, Darren Brown on our board here in Denver, TIC and Qat, Michael Bruegerman -- these two big construction companies. We said, "We just shifted and we've got a ton of construction-based wishes. Can you help us?" And of course, they jumped right in. We're still doing quite a few wishes with both of those partners, which is awesome. My team is awesome, but if you ask us to go out and build -- I think we've got a kid who wants a motorbike track in his backyard. We're going to hurt somebody if we do that personally. We need professionals. Just like we can't fly our kids to Disney. Partners, for what we do -- I always say every wish is one phone call away. Even if I think it's the most impossible wish, it's one phone call away from finding the right person that can help us grant it.

Jeff: So I've got a left-field question. Do people ever tell you no?

Scott: Great question. Yeah, there are always things we can't do. Like if every wish kid said they want a half-a-million-dollar RV, then we'd do seven wishes a year and that's all we'd do. So we certainly have guidelines. And then if there's a construction company that's super busy -- like a landscaping company in the summer with no capacity to help -- that's different.

Jeff: Are there certain people that just aren't interested in granting wishes, and you kind of have to steer the family in a different direction?

Scott: Yeah, definitely. Sometimes, for whatever reason, it might be something they can't do. We work with celebrities that sometimes have their own personal story, and meeting one of our wish kids might not be something they're emotionally ready for or should be doing at that time. So that happens on occasion. But we typically are able to pivot and do something -- maybe send them to a concert and make a really cool experience out of that. But that's pretty rare.

Jeff: Does anybody ever ask to go to space?

Scott: Not yet, actually. I think we do have a couple of wishes for those flights that make you weightless. So we pick up the phone. We've got a great relationship with the Air Force Academy and others. And there are now commercial companies that do that. Obviously, we can't afford it, so we try to find some way to partner with them. That's coming -- probably to space, right? Elon Musk, if you're listening, we need you. And he's done wishes before.

Jeff: He's got $240 billion. Definitely get him on your donor list.

Scott: SpaceX -- we have a lot of kids that want to see a launch, whether it's NASA, SpaceX. They want to go see a rocket launch.

Elise: My husband just saw one the other day.

Scott: It's crazy. So, yes, space is going to be our next big thing, I'm sure.

Jeff: So what's a typical budget for a wish?

Scott: We always say here in Colorado -- and it varies by area because sometimes it's harder to get kids even to an airport. We're lucky that we've got amazing airports, not just here in Denver. Colorado Springs Airport is a big partner, and then we've got our mountain airports. So it's easier for us to get kids places. I grew up in western Nebraska -- I had to typically drive to Denver, four and a half, five hours just to get on a plane. It'll vary. We always say ours is about $7,500 cash that it takes to grant each of our wishes. Some are certainly less. I have a lot of puppy wishes, although some of these puppies are getting expensive. It might become a high-cost wish at some point.

Jeff: How many details come with the wish? Is it "I want a puppy" or "I want a specific breed"?

Scott: I think I saw one on our wish list right now -- it's for a chihuahua, but it's like an apple-headed chihuahua or something. Our kids come in, go through the wish process, which is pretty in-depth. We try to get them in a space where they can open up their imagination, and then they say, "I want an apple-headed chihuahua," and we make that happen.

Jeff: How fun would it be to have those conversations? So what is the selection process for who gets the wishes?

Scott: We've got a national medical advisory team which ultimately determines the criteria. We say we are an organization that grants life-changing wishes for kids with critical illness, and that can mean a lot of different things. But that's not me deciding who qualifies -- it's medical professionals on our national medical advisory team. And then we've got Dr. Nakano, who is on that team but based here in Denver at Children's Hospital. Most of our wish families -- 90% -- are referred through Children's Hospital or Rocky Mountain Hospital for Children, the two biggest caregivers for kids here in Colorado.

Jeff: They're going to have to sign off on it too -- not just that they qualify, but that they're medically able to do it.

Scott: That's the biggest thing for me getting into this. When you sit outside the organization you go, "This is awesome, what you guys do, but how hard is it to send a kid to Disney World?" And then you start getting into the medical needs. They have nursing care, oxygen on a plane. There are all these complications. Our kids are typically going through a critical illness. We've got a really close relationship with the hospital systems in Orlando. Multiple times a year we'll have someone admitted to a hospital in Orlando because they maybe had too much excitement on their wish or just got sick or got the flu or got a cold, which for us isn't a big deal but for our wish kids typically becomes a big deal. They're in the hospital for a couple of days or multiple weeks, and then we're trying to get them back to Colorado. But at the end of the day, all of that's worth it. Our staff -- God bless them. It's midnight on a Tuesday, it's a holiday today, and they're getting calls saying, "Our card that we send all of our families with spending money -- our card's not working, and we're trying to pay our bill at Disney. What do we do?" We've got a team that picks up the phone 24 hours a day to support their families. It's rare to find people that dedicated to what they do.

Jeff: So what was the most expensive wish?

Scott: Expense is such a fluid word. We did a wish right after I started. Going back to that idea that every wish is a phone call away -- I got into the role and I'm looking through what we call our wish pipeline. It's all the kids waiting for wishes. And it's got "I want to meet Peyton Manning" or "I want to meet Patrick Mahomes or the Rock." And then there was one that said, "I wish to have a pet robotic dragon." It was a kiddo down in Colorado Springs with an amazing imagination. She had these imaginary pet dragons in her head that she wanted to turn into real robotic pet dragons. We got online and -- can't buy that on Amazon. So we picked up the phone. We got connected to Arrow Electronics, an amazing company right across the street from where we're at right now. We reached out to them, and Joe, who runs their CSR program, years ago had said, "We want to use technology for good. If you ever have any need for technology to solve a problem at your organization, let me know." So literally I get to Make-A-Wish and I was like, "Well, that seems like an Arrow Electronics opportunity." We got connected back to Joe and then also to their CEO through our board. And we said, "This is a wish that we have no chance of granting without your support." They literally, for several years, built a pet robotic dragon from scratch. They got the inventor of the Furby to come alongside them and help with this project. They paid for the wish and got it done. Think about how much it costs to build a pet robotic dragon from scratch.

Jeff: Hopefully they're selling these on Amazon. They went through all that effort.

Scott: They started -- those were the conversations we were having. And I'm brand new, like, "Who owns the intellectual property? Can we make the toy and sell it to support Make-A-Wish?" But it was a really cool project. It was during COVID, so it didn't quite get the PR it would have otherwise. They won a massive award for technology and innovation. They put together a team of the smartest people in the world, solved the problem, and built a dragon. They still have one at their headquarters. Someday we can go look at it.

Jeff: We should do that. Well, let's wrap it up with one last question. A friend of mine came up to me the other day, and he's involved with his organization, and he asked, "What leadership advice or books or resources do you recommend that I read as a nonprofit leader?" What parting advice would you give our audience? Leadership-wise, fundraising, books -- whatever.

Scott: I always go back to -- my first job out of college was working for Enterprise Rent-A-Car, Management Training Program. Enterprise back in the day, and still does, has one of the best training programs to take someone who has no idea how to run a business. I came from the University of Nebraska -- Harvard of the Plains, they call it. The Yale of the Midwest. So I was super smart, but had to learn how to run a business. They take you through a process based on really two main things -- three, but two main. If your employees don't get promoted, you don't get promoted. So it teaches you to focus on employee development and making sure your employees are happy and have good work-life balance. Number two, if your customer service score is not great -- not good, but not like a 10 out of 10 -- then you don't get promoted. And then the last thing is you've got to learn how to sell damage waiver. I got really good at two of those things.

Jeff: The damage waiver?

Scott: I learned that I was not good at selling damage waiver, which taught me at a young age that I needed to be really passionate about what I was talking about and involved with. I think that's what led me to the nonprofit world. But ultimately -- "Would you like the damage waiver? You really don't need this if you have insurance."

Jeff: Was that your sales pitch?

Scott: I was better than that. But I did learn so many things from that great organization. I meet with all of our interns and talk about career mapping. And that management philosophy is: first and foremost, really take care of your employees. If you have happy employees that love what they do, you'll have a great customer service score. For us, that means happy wish families, an amazing wish experience. So I spend as much time as I can making sure our team is supported, has the tools they need to be successful, and likes what they're doing and feels fulfilled. Everything runs off of that. Treat your people really good. Find really good people. When you can promote from within, because those are the people that love you and stick with you. Try to build your team from within when you can.

Jeff: That's great. Thank you. All right, well, this has been awesome and long but fun.

Elise: It's been almost an hour, I'd say.

Jeff: But we spent the first 20 minutes talking about country bands. So we're going to go back to that here in a second, but let me wrap this podcast. Thank you guys for listening to us today. This will be the end of this episode of Elevate Your Event. So until next time, happy fundraising. If you enjoyed our show, please take a moment to leave us a review. You can find us on Apple, Google, and Spotify. Don't forget to subscribe for more great content. And if you're a fan of video, check us out on YouTube. Until next time, happy fundraising.