ALS Ice Bucket Challenge

If you have no idea what this post is about then you've obviously been living under a rock for the last month. I have to admit I'm among those who didn't blink an eye at the videos at first, just kept scrolling, change the channel. Something about some disease and acting like a dousing of cold water on a hot day was unbearable. Whatever.

Most charities that draw my eye are about food and water shortages across the world. It's what I'm passionate about and what I've suggested people donate to many times on facebook as well as on this blog. What finally got my attention on this disease were the nay sayers, "Quit wasting ice and open your checkbook!" The more I saw this pop up on my feed the more I began to look into the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge which, as of yesterday, has raised over $50 million more for the organization than they had this time last year without this trendy obnoxious goofy annoying awareness raising phenomenon.

Then a friend posted an article about the true origin on the challenge - jerk sports celebrities being idiots with each other. Well, I have to admit they have been dunking cold liquids on each other for years (which always struck me as a strange celebratory habit) so it's not that surprising that this challenge sprouted with them. Apparently it turned into a dunk yourself or donate to someone challenge after a while. Then if I understand correctly from the couple of news stories I've seen it made it's way around to an ALS afflicted ex-baseball player and that's when ALS became the focus of donations. 

So it didn't START as the ALS ice bucket challenge therefore we should all just stop it.... Do I really need to respond to that sentiment?

"But they're spending money on ice" (please read in the whiniest voice possible), yeah.... and? Organizations raise money with things like this daily. Concerts, auctions, marathons, bike runs, lock ins, selling candy or stuff... I don't see much outrage over these things.... And in these instances the charity organizations is having to SPEND money to MAKE money. I've participated in enough charity races to know it's not cheap to put on these events. Many sponsors don't have the extra money to donate right now which means the organizations have to put up more of their own money. I know some that have opted to cancel long standing events in recent years because the cost out ways the increase in donations.

Here is a fundraiser that costs the organization NOTHING. And really? We're going to fuss over what, in most instances, is maybe a dollar or two in ice and water? The credit card company is probably taking more than that in transaction fee when you donate what has become the obligatory $10 whether you bucket up or not (because if we're going to be honest most of us common folk couldn't donate $100 to anything even if we really wanted to). Come on! 

Sure, there's gonna be those that see the bucket challenge as a self promoting moment and don't donate anything. Yeah, who cares? I know people that have shown up at charity runs/walks, haven't raised money or donated squat and still use up the resources and leave with "free" stuff. That pisses me off more than people posting videos on youtube. 

What matters are the numbers. ALS cost: $0, ALS (and a number of other charities world wide I might add): Millions and millions of dollars. You can't argue with that. I wouldn't be surprised if you see other charity challenges pop up because this business model is brilliant. 

There's other qualms I've seen about it too. "It's not raising awareness." Before last week I had no idea what ALS was and here I am researching and about to donate to them. So, that's definitely bull. It's raising more awareness than your bra color or insinuating where you like to have sex as the so called "breast cancer awareness" facebook posts over the last many years. 

"There's people all over the world without water, it's a gross slap in the face to waste water." .... Okay, at first I kinda felt this way, but seriously? If we're gonna be honest about western culture there's plenty of other things that seem far more insensitive in terms of waste than a little bit of water and ice. Hell, how many people fill their pools with thousands of gallons of water every year and don't blink an eye. Tons of people water their lawns all summer long without a second thought to water waste. And yet we're gonna get up in arms about this? Give me a break.

Which brings me to this video:

Where my husband has been challenged. I'm making suggestions to him on who he can call out. I do hope it doesn't occur to him to call me out. We'll see here in a few hours I guess. I'll update then.