Make-A-Wish America
A Streetlight Digital Case Study
The Challenge
Make-A-Wish America already had a strong foundation for youth fundraising, with programs engaging students, schools, campuses, and local communities across the country. The opportunity was to bring those efforts together under a more cohesive national program with a clear identity, consistent messaging, and an easier path for young people to get involved.
The vision was bigger than a rebrand. Make-A-Wish needed a flexible program that could support youth activation and peer-to-peer fundraising across audiences while giving chapters the tools and resources to bring it to life locally.
Our Approach
Streetlight began with a specialized strategic assessment to build the foundation for the reimagined program. Working closely with the Make-A-Wish America team, we evaluated program positioning, audience needs, naming and messaging, storytelling, activation strategy, resource needs, and the digital experience.
That strategy established a unified direction for what would become Student WishMakers, bringing youth-led fundraising efforts together under one clear, empowering national identity.
From there, Streetlight helped translate the strategy into a complete program experience. Our team supported strategy, copywriting, UX, design, development, visual assets, and email communications, including autoresponders, milestone messages, and coaching emails.
The website was designed to clearly introduce Student WishMakers, make pathways for different audiences easy to understand, and inspire students, schools, chapters, and supporters to take action. The visual identity gave the program a distinct, youth-friendly presence while remaining connected to the Make-A-Wish brand, and the messaging created an empowering, joyful voice that chapters could use consistently.
Streetlight also led project management from kickoff through launch, coordinating the many strategic, creative, technical, and communications workstreams required to bring the program together. This allowed the Make-A-Wish America team to stay focused on the vision while we kept the work moving toward launch.
The Results
The result was Student WishMakers, a unified national youth fundraising program designed to give students of all ages a clear way to raise funds, rally their communities, and help grant life-changing wishes for children facing critical illnesses.
The launch brought previously separate youth fundraising efforts together under one recognizable identity, one messaging framework, and one scalable program structure that chapters could activate across the country.
More than a website or campaign, Student WishMakers created a stronger foundation for the future of youth fundraising at Make-A-Wish America. It is a program built to grow with its students, schools, chapters, and communities, giving young people a clear path to lead, rally, and fundraise in support of the Make-A-Wish mission.
For Streetlight, the work demonstrates what is possible when strategy, creative, technology, fundraising expertise, and end-to-end project management come together around one shared vision.
