Oh yeah I didn't mean to say it was born out of narcissism, just that that's what it has morphed into with celebrities and the Facebook/Instagram set. Personally I think it's doing a world of good. Kind of like the wearing of the pink for a cause near and dear to my heart. If anyone has a problem with it, that says something about them. In both cases. _
I actually had the good fortune of meeting the guy who I am sure was behind the idea. He gave a talk at a conference I was at. He's a genius at inspiring change and has consulted many charitable organizations and Fortune 500 companies. This was about a year ago and he mentioned he was starting to work as a consultant for the ALS Foundation after meeting Steve Gleason the former Saints player with ALS. His whole philosophy was about empowering people to donate by thinking outside the box, using social media, and creating a means for linking people.. lo and behold a year later and we have this amazing success story that from the ALS foundation that followed his philosophy. Can't be a coincidence. I personally just donated - Facebook annoys me, but I gotta admit it was a great idea and i am happy it has been successful.
Well the fact that I know what ALS is, goes to show they havent done a good job toward awareness. There are many diseases/sicknesses that no one has even heard of.
Those are actually really good metrics..so it's unfair to knock them!! I can't remember the industry standard but I'd venture to say they are better than most charities out there. They are using more of their revenues for Research than they are for Fundraising and Administration combined - which definitely its better than most charities. I am also impressed by the 19% given to patient and community services. That means it's actually touching people stricken by the disease. There are many charities that are way, way worse than that. Administration is usually a lot higher. I am certainly not knocking the cause, but for some reason a lot of the breast cancer foundations in particular have poor distribution of resources. I read an article once from the Chronicle of Philanthropy and out of the top 10 worst in terms of expense metrics, like 6 or so were breast cancer foundations, sad to see. Just for comparison of numbers, soxx - those charities that scored the worst had like 96% of their total expenses going towards administration and fundraising expenses vs. the 21% we see here.
Well I honestly have no idea, ive heard a lot of criticism from that view, but that is why I asked for others input.
I completely agree with the original sentiment that it has become about attention and one-upsmanship. The increase in money raised can't be denied and that's awesome. Still, I wonder, of all the people who have done this challenge, how many actually have any knowledge or increased awareness of ALS.
Anything under 15% administration fees is considered top notch, at 11% they are great. The article you posted, while you may not have been aware, does a disservice to the foundation. 78% actually going out to research, education, etc is extremely good. The 14% for fundraising is not bad, they need to pay people to work the phones, can't have all volunteers. To give an idea, The American Cancer Society spends over 40% on admin. and fundraising. The Police Protective Fund spends 93% of the collected funds on admin. and fundraising. People really need to know their charities before donating. The website below is a great resource. http://www.charitynavigator.org/ Edit: CEO of ALS Association makes $297K a year, a large chunk of coin but being in charge of millions you need to pay to make sure it is operated correctly.
The million videos can get annoying but even worse are the special snowflakes that want to show how deep and free thinking they are by pointing out that people should just donate instead of "wasting water". I saw one nitwit the other day saying how this was partially responsible for the drought in CA.
Agreed. McDonald's calls it the Ronald McDonald house for a reason: advertising. That's for attention and personal profit (and tax purposes, probably)...but who cares? They do great things and help people. Is it completely altruistic? No, but charity doesn't have to be. If the option is people doing something for attention that happens to raise $55mil for a charity vs nobody talking about it and therefore nobody donating how can you argue against the former?
So how many diseases has charities helped to find a cure? March of Dimes helped cure polio, any others?
The original ice bucket challenge was to raise breast cancer awareness. Supposedly the shock of ice water being poured on your skull is similar to what cancer patients go through during chemo. This challenge has been going on in Hawai'i for over 3 months, it's funny that America is now catching on to this trend. I got called out by a friend to do it, and gladly did so without immense bitching as I see in this thread. I also donated $25 to the American cancer society. Oh you care about wasting water now? Lmao. Also, Charlie Sheen's ice bucket challenge
No matter how you feel about the attention grabbing theres been an insane spike in donations to the cause and thats all that matters at the end of the day, they should do this with cancer and all the other deadly diseases as well. I guess it does say a lot about us Amercans that we need something like this to donate/ or even make some of us aware to it but thats a discussion for another day.
It's true that it has raised a lot of money for ALS, but how much of this money is simply donations that would have gone to other causes if not? Brilliant marketing strategy by the foundation, and people are dumb enough to go along with it to appease their egos on youtube, so hey, kudos to them for the idea. However, nobody should have to be "challenged" to donate to a cause. As human beings, if we can afford it, we should help out for causes we believe in. That's the sad part of it. A lot of people are doing it to look good or avoid looking bad. When I donate to a cause, I simply donate. I don't make a big fuss about it, brag about it or make a youtube video. If that's what you need to do to feel good about yourself then fine, go for it. I'll just do what I do. Since ALS has plenty of funding this year, I definitely will be avoiding donating to that cause, no offense. If I get challenged, I'll forward my donation to Alzheimer research, and no, I won't be dumping any water on my head or making a bragging video about it. I really hope that's not true. Dumping a bucket of water on your head is NOTHING like battling cancer and equating those 2 things is insulting to anybody who's currently in that battle or has a loved one going through that.
