Skip to the document
Aperture ScienceInnovatorsWe Do What We Must Because We Can
Established 1943Upper Michigan, U.S.A.
Telephone ENrichment 9-0943
Form No.ASI-211
DepartmentCorporate Philanthropy
IssuedSpring 1959
ClassificationUnrestricted
RevisionFourth printing. Conversion table updated.
RegisteredMichigan, 1956
CharitableRegistered 1956
Corporate Philanthropy — A Registered Charity

The Take-A-Wish Foundation

Founded in 1956 as the charitable arm of this company, the Foundation collects the wishes of the terminally ill and puts them to industrial use. Every wish is received in writing, filed, acknowledged, and converted. The Foundation is proud of its conversion rate and prints it below.

Written by Cave Johnson, President & Founder and Chairman of the Foundation

2,206Wishes receivedSince 1956
2,206Wishes acknowledgedWithin the week
14Wishes grantedAs stated
2,188Wishes convertedTo other purposes
99.2%Conversion rateHighest in the sector

I want to describe this Foundation plainly, because it is the part of this company that people outside it understand least and the part I am, in a private way, proudest of. A dying child has a wish. Most charities grant it, once, and the wish is gone. This Foundation takes the wish, files it, and uses it, and the wish is not gone. It is in a cabinet on the second floor doing work.

A wish is an idea nobody has told to be reasonable. That is rarer than you think. Every man on my payroll has been told to be reasonable ten thousand times and it shows. A child of nine who has been told she will not see ten has not been told anything of the kind, and her wish arrives on my desk in crayon and it is, four times in five, a better research proposal than anything Applied Sciences has sent up in a month.

How The Foundation Works

A wish is received in writing, by post, from the child or the family. It is acknowledged within the week, by a letter from me, in my hand, which I do not delegate. It is then read by the Foundation’s committee, which is me and Caroline, and one of two things happens.

If the wish can be granted as stated, it is granted as stated, in full, at the company’s expense, and nobody is told. Fourteen have been.

If the wish cannot be granted as stated — and most cannot, because most are for something the world does not contain — it is converted. The wish is given a file number and sent to the department best placed to find out whether the world could be made to contain it. That is what this company is for, and the Foundation is the purest expression of it we have.

Wishes received and disposed of, 1956 – Spring 1959

Wishes received and disposed of, 1956 – Spring 1959
Wish, by categoryReceivedGrantedConvertedConverted to
To fly6180618Aerial Faith Plate, ASI-207. Trajectory programme.
To be somewhere else4023399Applied Sciences. Aperture programme.
To be stronger, faster3770377Gels, ASI-203 and 204. Applied Biology.
To see the moon2042202Substrate Division. They have it.
To not be afraid1880188Operations. The volunteer programme.
To have a friend who stays1710171Manufacturing.
A cake1419132Commissary. Standing order.
To keep going94094Computation.
Other1107Four not converted. Four not grantable. Four in my desk.

Every wish, granted or converted, is retained on file in the Foundation’s cabinet on the second floor, in the child’s own hand, and the cabinet is the only one in this building the President has never once asked Records to reorganise.

Nine cakes. The Foundation has baked nine cakes in three years and the commissary has baked one in six, and the Foundation would like it known that it borrows the commissary’s oven and returns it clean.

A Letter, And What Became Of It

RECEIVED 4 NOVEMBER 1957. FILE TW-1,404.
Dear Mr. Johnson, I am 9. The doctor says I will not see 10. I do not want a pony. I want a friend who does not have to go home at the end and who will not be sad after. Can you make one. I have drawn it. It is square so it does not roll away. Love, Ellen.

MATERIALS REQUISITION, 11 NOVEMBER 1957. REF. TW-1,404.
Storage cube, weighted, standard, one (1). To be marked on each face by hand. To be delivered to the address on the file. Not for the catalogue. Not to be numbered. Charged to the Foundation. Approved. — C.J.

The cube was delivered on the fourteenth. The Foundation received a second letter in December, from the mother, and it is in the file, and I am not going to print it, and I read it once a month.
“A wish is an idea nobody has told to be reasonable. I have a building full of men who have been told to be reasonable. I would trade the lot for a cabinet of crayon.”
— Cave Johnson, Chairman, to the Michigan registrar of charities

Interoffice Memorandum

ToApplied BiologyFromThe FoundationDate2 February 1959ReFiles TW-0,911 through TW-1,004 — ‘to keep going’ccComputation

Ninety-four wishes, received over three years, from ninety-four children, in ninety-four hands, all saying in one form or another that they would like to keep going after the doctor says they cannot.

The Foundation has held these ninety-four for three years because no department could take them. The Foundation now understands that a programme exists, jointly between your two departments, with a number and not a name, which is asking whether a person can be written down. The Foundation is sending you the ninety-four. It does not need them back.

Cave JohnsonPresident & Founder

Donations — Cut Here — Post To The Foundation

The Foundation Accepts Wishes. It Does Not Accept Money.

The company funds the Foundation in full and will go on doing so. Donors who wish to contribute are asked instead to write down the one thing they would ask for if they had been told they could not be reasonable, and to post it. It will be acknowledged. It will be filed. It will be used.

Verifying personnel file…

He answers every one by hand. Two thousand two hundred and six. It takes him the first hour of every morning and it is the only hour of the day he does not cough. — C.

The FoundationCorporate Philanthropy — Second FloorWishes Received — Money Returned

Form ASI-211. The Take-A-Wish Foundation is a registered charity and a wholly funded arm of Aperture Science Innovators. Conversions are made to the programmes described at ASI-207, ASI-206, ASI-404 and elsewhere. The Foundation keeps every letter and has never once thrown one away.

ninety four children wished to keep going. he sent the wishes to the machine. thats what its for. thats what it was always for