ALS Analysis

I love when things go viral on the internet, especially it makes people laugh or when it inspires people to do something charitable. In the case of the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge it accomplished both of those things for me. A lot of the videos were fun to watch and made me laugh. It was also fun to see so many people get involved to try and help out others who are in need. There were those who tried to show off their wealth or to “one up” everybody else, but at its core the Ice Bucket Challenge was a way for people to show their support and challenge others to do the same.

This challenge got so huge that, naturally, I began to have a lot of questions. First off, what was ALS? How much money is actually being raised? How much is going towards research? I think a lot of the questions I was having were probably similar to those that other people had around me, and that’s why I decided to write about this. 

One of the best pieces I saw about ALS was about this man pictured above, Pete Frates. His story is pretty remarkable, and he is one of the most popular faces for the disease today. It teaches us a lot about how ALS affects a person. ALS is short for Amyotrophic lateral sclerosisprogressive neurodegenerative disease that affects nerve cells in the brain and the spinal cord. It is also know as Lou Gehrig’s disease, named after the famous baseball player of the early 1900's.

So that’s where this challenge comes into play. People wanted to help individuals like Pete who’s lives were completely flipped upside down by ALS. The man who is accredited as initiator of this ALS ice bucket challenge is Chris Kennedy. Time did a nice piece breaking down the events leading up to and following his initial ice bucket challenge. It originally was started by someone else, and was designed to benefit a variety of charities. It wasn’t until the challenge was sent Chris’ way that it had the name “ALS ice bucket challenge.” His cousin Pat Quinn had been diagnosed with ALS, and Chris took the challenge in his honer, and renamed it. The ALS community is pretty tight and it wasn’t very long until Pete Frates caught wind of it, and soon the rest of the world would participate in the challenge. 

Next thing we know everybody and their mothers were doing it. It caught steam fairly quickly, and the trend seemed to last the entire summer. It could have been perpetuated due to the fact that it was summer, and people were looking for any excuse to stay cool but regardless the ice bucket challenge was “a thing.” How many people participated, you ask? Well, Facebook told TIME that by August 18^th more than 2.4 million videos had been shared concerning the ice bucket challenge. Talk about viral! In the span of five days the videos doubled from 1.2 million to 2.4 million. Many of us personally know some of the people who took the challenge, or maybe you participated in it yourself but the real question is...Did you donate?

If you're like me, you may be pretty skeptical when it comes to charities. I feel like all too often I turn on the news and someone has been dooped in to donating to an imaginary charity. Or maybe you even donate to a legitimate charity, but not that much money is even used for research or finding a cure. So that's what I had to ask here. How much is being donated, and how much is being used to help find treatments? As of late August, the ice bucket challenge helped the ALS Association raise over $100 million. That's crazy! Over the course of a few months they eclipsed their entire total from the year before by 3,500%.

Now that we have the numbers, we want to know how much is actually used for research. Can you believe that only 29% of the money donated actually goes towards research? That really irked me a lot when I found out. Then I did some more research. This calmed me down a little bit, but then I heard some more rumors. I heard that their employees were making a pretty penny. So I decided to go directly to the source for answers. Once again I found some answers about some of the myths about their spending. The truth of it is, is that when something great is going on in the world there will be opposition. People have a hard time trusting one another, and I'm probably skeptical at times and fall into this category. We even sometimes lose sight of what was accomplished in the process.

The ALS association used/will use over 29 million dollars for research. That is amazing! Yes there is a lot more money not being used for research, but some of the other things the association is using the money for is necessary. While people have a hard time thinking that people make money in charities, someone has to be there taking care of the finances and getting the ball rolling for research. They spend countless hours planning events, updating their website, and doing other things for the benefit of those with ALS. Heck, they would use more money on research if people would have just specified that on their donation. Which brings me to my next point.

One of the big issues there was with this challenge was the lack of knowledge on so many levels. The obvious one being that not many people even knew what ALS was when they made the video. Another issue was about the money as I talked about earlier. If you are going to donate to a charity you need to do your research beforehand. Find out what they are doing with their money, because believe it or not...they'll usually tell you. Don't just assume that because your paranoid friend on Facebook said the association was spending the money on their lavish lifestyles means that it must be true. Social media can inspire people to do nice things like the ALS ice bucket challenge, but if you're not careful you can believe something that are just silly and not true.

One of the things that I have learned from this whole analysis is that the power of social media is so real. One of the "realest" examples that rings true in this case is the comparison I read about fundraising for charities. They used the example of Livestrong and their donations over a two year period. It took them 2 years to raise $50 million. Which is a great feat. I still remember buying 2 or three of those bands as a teenager. Livestrong had to do that without the help of social media tools like Facebook and Youtube. This ALS ice bucket challenge doubled that amount in the short span of three or so months. Something that even the association acknowledges would have never happened without the power of social media.