We have great news that we are very excited to share with you. Earlier this year, the Make-A-Wish Foundation® of North Texas and the Make-A-Wish Foundation® of the Texas Plains started discussing the possibility of a realignment that would combine the two chapters. The plan was presented to the national office and they approved it at the beginning of the summer. Therefore, as of September 1, 2011, the two chapters will combine and the Texas Plains Chapter will become a region of the North Texas Chapter.

When you think about it, the realignment makes a lot of sense. It will allow our Chapter to share resources with the new Texas Plains Region, which will help keep the day-to-day costs of doing business at a minimum so that all of our regions can devote more time and money to granting wishes. However, we want to assure you that all funds raised in the Texas Plains region will be used to grant wishes to children in the Texas Plains region.

You might be asking yourself how the realignment will affect you as a volunteer, donor, wish family, or maybe just a fan. The fact is that local wish-granting and fundraising activities will remain almost the same. The new region will maintain its two regional offices in Amarillo and Lubbock, and existing chapter staff will simply become regional staff. This new region joins five other existing regions in the North Texas Chapter. These regions have offices located in Irving, Fort Worth, Midland, Tyler and El Paso. Most importantly, this realignment means that the new Texas Plains Region will have more resources to fulfill wishes for local children and that is what we are all here to do.

Later this year, you will begin to receive a bi-monthly volunteer newsletter which will provide you with information on wish-granting and fundraising opportunities in your community.

Thank you for support during this transition and we look forward to the upcoming year! As of September 1st, you will see the website has changed to www.ntx.wish.org and our email addresses. In addition, the Texas Plains facebook and twitter pages will be moved to the North Texas pages at www.facebook.com/makeawishnt and twitter at twitter.com/makeawishnt.