September 30, 2004 | Read Time: 6 minutes
For the past six years, Paula Van Ness ran the Make-a-Wish Foundation of America, in Phoenix, a charity often credited with pioneering the concept of providing trips, computers, celebrity meetings, and other things to brighten the lives of seriously ill children.
Now Ms. Van Ness is continuing in a similar line of work as chief executive officer of the smaller, lesser-known Starlight Starbright Children’s Foundation, in Los Angeles. The group grew out of a merger this summer of the Starlight Children’s Foundation and the Starbright Foundation.
“I personally enjoy working in organizations that are much more in a start-up mode, where you can turn on a dime if you need to and seize new opportunities,” says Ms. Van Ness, 52, who has overseen five nonprofit human-services organizations over the past 30 years.
The film producer Peter Samuelson — whose movies include Arlington Road and Revenge of the Nerds — established the Starlight Children’s Foundation in 1983 to provide services to sick children and their families, from granting wishes to setting up playrooms in hospitals and organizing group outings. It helped some 150,000 ill children a month in the United States, Canada, Britain, and Australia.
Mr. Samuelson and the filmmaker Steven Spielberg founded the Starbright Foundation in 1990 to provide technology-based services for ill children. The group created online resources to link sick youngsters and developed kid-friendly CD-ROM’s and videos designed to inform young people about their medical conditions. (Mr. Samuelson is chairman of the board of the new group, while Mr. Spielberg is chairman emeritus.) About 30,000 eligible children a month benefit from the programs.
The merger of the two groups is aimed at expanding their reach and simplifying things within the mix of groups serving chronically ill young people. Ms. Van Ness, who had worked with Mr. Samuelson while she was at Make-a-Wish, admits she often got Starlight and Starbright confused. “I didn’t understand for a long time that they were actually two different groups,” she says. “Joining forces is just the smart thing to do.”
Mr. Samuelson says two organizations were needed at first because “software creation is financially risky.”
Ms. Van Ness always wanted to work with children and initially set out to become a kindergarten teacher. But after serving on the board of a local Planned Parenthood chapter while at the University of Arizona, she ended up pursuing a career in the nonprofit world. Over the years she has led the National AIDS Fund, the National Alliance to End Homelessness, AIDS Project Los Angeles, and Family Planning Centers of Greater Los Angeles as well as the Make-a-Wish Foundation.
Under her stewardship, Make-a-Wish doubled its annual revenue, from $14-million in 1998 to an expected $29-million in 2004, and brought its services nationwide.
By comparison, the combined revenue of the merged Starlight Starbright organization is around $4-million, which largely comes from foundation grants and special fund-raising events. It has eight American affiliates and three overseas.
Mr. Samuelson says that with the merger of the organizations, the new board sought to bring in “a world-class CEO — and Paula Van Ness is just that.”
Ms. Van Ness will be paid $250,000 a year, or about $10,000 more than in her previous job. She says she sees many ways to expand the group’s reach, including setting a personal goal of doubling the number of children served within five years.
Ms. Van Ness discussed the new organization and her new position with The Chronicle.
Why did you decide to leave Make-a-Wish?
Over my career I’ve moved in and out of organizations. I’ve never stayed that long. I always had a philosophy that organizations need different kinds of leaders in different stages of their growth and development. I felt that I’d accomplished a lot of what I needed to do at Make-a-Wish, so it was probably a good time for me, personally, to leave. It felt to me like someone else could probably take the organization to the next level.
Will Starlight continue to grant wishes as part of its work?
I would imagine that some look at my coming to Starlight Starbright from Make-a-Wish and think, “Oh, I bet she’s going to try to ratchet up the wish-granting program.” That’s not at all my intention. I would be happy if the programs that we develop for Starlight Starbright are so compelling that our chapters all embrace those, and that the wish granting is left to other wish-granting organizations, including Make-a-Wish. There’s so much work to be done on a continuing basis for these sick kids and their families that we’ve got plenty to do without doing the wishes. Frankly, I would also want to position this newly merged organization so that it would be better differentiated from Make-a-Wish.
Is there a need for better cooperation among groups serving ill children?
Ideally, I would like to see organizations work more closely together and collaborate and not be competitive, but the reality is, whether they are organizations doing wish granting or serving people with AIDS or homelessness, there are some tensions.
What is gained by combining the two organizations?
The interface of programs and the products will be smoother, more efficient, and more effective. For instance, both organizations needed to have relationships with hospitals, and so they had people dedicated to building and maintaining those relationships for their different programs and services. Now we can have one relationship, and actually in that relationship have a bag of things to offer that has much more diversity and integration. For instance, Starlight was building playrooms in hospitals with corporate sponsorships, primarily from Toys R Us and Hollywood Video. Starbright, meanwhile, was selling to hospitals this online community called Starbright World, which kids were utilizing while they were in the hospital. Wouldn’t it make sense if in a Starlight-initiated playroom you’d have a computer station with Starbright World on it?
It also provides for folks developing products on the Starbright side a worldwide network of people who are very close to the population that we are serving, and to hospitals, institutions, and associations. I think we’ll get new and better ideas and ventures because that network will be feeding ideas.
ABOUT PAULA VAN NESS, CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER OF THE STARLIGHT STARBRIGHT CHILDREN’S FOUNDATION
Education: Earned a bachelor of science degree from the University of Arizona in 1974 and a master’s degree in human resources and organizational development from the University of San Francisco in 1984.
Previous employment: Served as head of the Make-a-Wish Foundation of America from 1998 to 2004. Was president of the National AIDS Fund, in Washington, from 1988 to 1996. Also previously led the National Alliance to End Homelessness, AIDS Project Los Angeles, and Family Planning Centers of Greater Los Angeles.
Hobbies: Fiction writing. “For the past 10 years I’ve been working on a novel as a writing project with a group of friends. Soon it will be done and then our new hobby will be trying to find an agent.”
What she’s been reading: Death by Meeting: A Leadership Fable About Solving the Most Painful Problem in Business, by Patrick Lencioni, and Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books, by Azar Nafisi.
