Wins for Wishes Online Auction

As part of the Applied Project Management course, students are required to conduct an event with specific targets. The main goal of this course is to give students an opportunity to put into practice what they learned in Semester One. By undertaking this event, the students are expected to go through all the stages of the project management cycle (i.e. from Initiation to closing) while considering all the stakeholders, risks, and costs. The course instructor, Prof. David Solomon (also the Project Sponsor) provided the class with 5 Project Charters (5 possible projects to choose from). From here, one project is assigned to each team by Prof. Solomon.

The Make-a-Wish foundation has already previously partnered with the PMGC program in Algonquin College to conduct fundraising events. The Make-a-Wish foundation is a nonprofit founded in the United States that helps critically ill children achieve their greatest wishes (Make-A-Wish, n.d.). In Canada, Make-A-Wish has granted over 36,000 wishes since 1983 (Make-A-Wish Canada, n.d.).

As explained by Darlene Bennett, a member of the Development Team in Ottawa, Make-a-Wish runs various charity events to raise money so that these children’s wishes may be granted. She added that on average, each wish would cost around CAD 10,000.00. Since this is a huge sum of money for one event to raise, multiple events are run so that the total profit may sum up to the specified amount of CAD 10,000.00.

Although all projects that were provided as options seemed equally challenging and potentially rewarding, the impact a charity would have on the community, and specifically, on an ailing child, motivated the Project Team to submit an application with the Make-A-Wish foundation as our primary choice of project.

As Ms. Bennett mentioned, having their wishes come true rejuvenates the children and inspires them to fight harder against their illnesses. The possibility of making a child’s wish come true is a great purpose and, in the Project Team’s opinion, trumps other outcomes.

After careful consideration of all the applications, the Project Sponsor awarded Team 13, The Pentagon group, their first choice for a project: A charity event for the Make-A-Wish foundation. The project team is currently undertaking research into various aspects of this project before the scheduled Kickoff in week 9 of the term.