Five Questions With: Tom McGovern

Tom McGovern is executive director of Warwick-based A Wish Come True.
Tom McGovern is executive director of Warwick-based A Wish Come True.

Tom McGovern, executive director of Warwick-based A Wish Come True, first began his service with the nonprofit as a board member in 1991. He has since held numerous positions on the board, including serving as president for 10 years. McGovern also spent more than 35 years as an operations manager for UPS, and currently serves as commissioner on the Board of Public Safety for Warwick. He serves on the board of directors of the Central Rhode Island Chamber of Commerce and Natasha Love Foundation, as well as the community advisory board for United Way.
PBN: How and when did A Wish Come True form as a nonprofit?
MCGOVERN:
AWCT was formed as a nonprofit in August of 1982 by our founder Rosemary Bowers. Rosemary wanted to make the lives of sick children a little brighter and give them something to look forward to that was related to their illness. Rosemary recognized how much a child’s illness affected the entire family, and what it must be like for the parents and siblings to have to deal with day-to-day hospital visits, doctors, surgeries and treatments. Rosemary wanted to give the child and their family the opportunity to have their wish granted – something positive to look forward to.
PBN: How do you differentiate the organization and its work from similar nonprofits like the Make a Wish Foundation?
MCGOVERN:
We are different than Make A Wish because we do not belong to a national group. We raise our money locally and we spend our money locally. We are able to run our organization with two paid employees and over 200 volunteers, which allows us to keep our costs down to a bare minimum. We own our office, we pay no rent, no mortgage. Not many nonprofits own their buildings free and clear. We have just completed our most recent 990, and for the second year in a row we gave back 88 cents of every dollar to our kids and their families. Small staff, low overhead and great volunteers make it possible to keep our operating costs at the lowest possible level.
PBN: What are your biggest fundraising challenges?
MCGOVERN:
Fundraising is always a challenge year in and year out. We do have many loyal and devoted supporters who we count on each and every year. We raise money in various ways: UPS employees and management people have been leading the way through United Way for many years, and most of our other money is raised through third-party fundraisers, like dinner dances, golf tournaments, rock, rhythm and blues festivals, motorcycle runs, meat raffles, etc. We have been the beneficiary of estate planning on a number of occasions recently. We would love to expand our efforts in this area.
PBN: Describe a success story and how you made it happen?
MCGOVERN:
Our greatest success stories would have to be the longtime supporters, who come back year after year. We have a few people who have been there for us for over 20 years, like the Downing Family, Jimmy Cavanaugh and committee, and Frank and Wendy Ray, who see the impact their efforts make in our organization. We have many others who have been there 10 or 15 years. Organizations like UPS, Alex and Ani, and CVS are there for us and our kids and their families. We get to hear many stories of people who tell us that when they are having a bad day, they stop and think of the week they were on their wish and the happy memories come to mind and they start feeling better right away. We make our success stories one wish at a time.
PBN: What are your long-range goals for the organization?
MCGOVERN:
We will continue to be very grateful to our longtime supporters for all their efforts. It is at their events that we get spin-offs or new friends that step up and want to run their own events. We will look to maintain and strengthen our board of directors, to guide us moving forward. We will continue to look to corporate America for help contributing their fair share. We will continue to work on improving our social media sites to help spread the good word and activities we having going on here at A Wish Come True.

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