WishmakersAU fundraises to grant wishes closer to home.
WishmakersAU raises money for the Make-A-Wish Foundation, which grants wishes for children with life-threatening medical conditions, in Alabama.
Olivia Yocum, president of WishmakersAU, brought the club to campus starting fall of 2012.
"My sister, Nora Banks, works for Make-A-Wish for the state of Alabama as a development manager and so she wanted it to come to Auburn," Yocum said. "It was a really long process. We worked on it for about a year before it got (to Auburn)."
Since the club works directly through the Make-A-Wish Foundation, they have to follow the foundation's rules, which means they are not allowed to ask a 'Wish Kid' to come to any event, unless they volunteer.
"We're not allowed to go through [Make-A-Wish] and be like 'Hey can you come speak.' They have to actually volunteer to come to an event," Yocum said.
Although they have yet to have a 'Wish Kid' volunteer to come to one of their events, the organization has still had success at their fundraisers.
This past fall semester, the WishmakersAU held a Rake-A-Thon.
"We put out an ad in papers and stuff, as well as, handed out fliers and got people to volunteer their homes to rake their lawns," said David Sanderlin, events coordinator for WishmakersAU. "There's a suggested amount of money that they can donate per hour that you're there."
Families were suggested to donate at least $30 an hour for raking.
"People usually went pretty above," Sanderlin said. "People were very generous in the Opelika and Auburn area."
The event lasted a couple weekends long and the club was able to raise approximately $2,000.
WishmakersAU's event for the spring semester will be a 5K Saturday, March 30. Registration is $20 and comes with a T-shirt.
"You can go on our Facebook page and there is a link to our website, or you can go to WishmakersAU.com," Yocum said.
Next year the club hopes to put on a benefit concert and art auction.
"One of the girls that's in (the club), her mom owns a frame shop, so we wanted to put on an art show fundraiser," Yocum said.
The organization's goal is to grant at least one wish this year, which costs approximately $10,000.
"I think if we can do the 5K right, I think we can grant a wish," Yocum said. "We want to make this a long term thing, not with just us every year. When we graduate we want it to still be here and still be big."
Since this is only the second semester that the organization has been around, it only has approximately 15 members.
"With more people we could have bigger events and then we can expand and have more man power," said Will Gosdin, coordinator for financial committee for WishmakersAU.
Small time commitment is all that is needed to join.
"There are very few other ways to spend your time better," Sanderlin said. "It's a really good organization and we don't demand a lot of time. It's really just for these events. It's just a couple hours, like last semester for people to come rake for one or two hours out of their semester."
The club stresses their flexibility with schedules.
"Coming from an outsider just starting an organization, I didn't want to bombard people with fliers on the concourse and shoving it in their faces," Yocum said. "I didn't want to bombard people with fliers on the concourse and shoving it in their faces. I don't want it to be too demanding. We all have our stuff that is going on. We just want to make it fun, but it's also for a good cause."
Although the organization is not allowed to ask 'Wish Kids' to come to events, the members have met people from all over the nation that have been affected by the foundation in some way.
"You can't really say that your money went to this specific kid, but before this even started I met a guy and he was a year younger than me," Yocum said. "He was flying in and out of Houston, Texas, to get transplants and he had cancer. It hit him within the year and he died over the summer. It hit me last summer. I only met him once, but it was a life-changing thing."
Sanderlin had a similar experience when meeting a student at Auburn who used to be a 'Wish Kid.'
"One of the first weeks we asked people to join last semester, we asked someone 'Hey would you be interested in getting involved with this?'" Sanderlin said. "He didn't tell us right off the bat, but after two minutes of talking with us he said 'I was up to receive a liver from the Make-A-Wish foundation when I was a kid." He said by the time (the wish) had gotten to him, he had already received the transplant, so he passed (the wish) on to another person."
The organization enables its members to meet people they would not have met otherwise.
"It was cool to meet someone whose life had been affected and who was familiar with the organization," Sanderlin said. "It was very cool."
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