The Ice Bucket Challenge? Really?

Currently “taking America by storm” according to numerous media outlets and the Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis or ALS Association (ALS otherwise known as Lou Gehrig’s disease) is the Ice Bucket Challenge whereby people tape themselves dumping a large bucket of ice over their heads, then a challenge is issued to two friends to do the same. If they don’t, they are supposed to pay ALS $100.

All the big stars like Justin Timberlake are, of course, jumping on board. Billionaire Bill Gates, who is all about saving lives with a goal to vaccinate every child on earth, is on it. The charity is reporting over a quarter of a million new donations garnering $15.6 million just since the end of July, as compared with $1.8 million received in the same period last year.

Certainly with that much money, they must be jumping for joy because they can finally cure Lou Gehrig’s disease, right?

The disease afflicts some 12,000 Americans a year, and doctor’s diagnose about 5,000 new people with it each year according to the CDC. It’s a horrible disease to be sure, but by definition, it is rare as LA Times writer Michael Hiltzik reported. (Apparently he wrote ALS to ask where they got their website figures of 30,000, but they haven’t written him back.)

Looking into ALS’s figures provided to Guidestar, a website that gathers and disseminates information about every single IRS-registered nonprofit organization, including financial information reported, the Association received nearly $88 million in public support just from 2008 to 2012.

According to the organization’s 2012 990 form, ALS spent nearly $3 million that year just on educating people on ALS and what the association does. In fact, just paying the highest compensated key employees at ALS cost over $1.5 million. To be fair, they did spend $6.6 million on research grants into finding cures, but they brought in nearly $20 million total that year.

Where’s that ALS cure? Or even, by now, the cause? (Charities don’t normally run for the cause, just the cure, but still.)

That much money is floating around in an age of great technological advancement, and we can’t even find out what causes Lou Gehrig’s disease?

In just a five-year span, that place brought in nearly $88 MILLION dollars. That’s not chump change.

And therein lies the conundrum.

This isn’t to say that charities don’t do good things. They certainly do. But you just never hear the breaking good news that any of them found a cure for the ailment they’re rallying behind.

In fact, when is the last time you heard of a cause or cure being found that caused any of these charities to finally fix the problem and close up shop? “Well, we finally cured X disease, so glad we put in all that hard work over all those years raising all that money for charity, guess we can all go home now.”

Has that ever happened in the history of charities? Or are all these organizations really just kicking the can down the road?

Just asking, because it seems like someone should. Why would any of these charities ever really want to cure their paycheck?

As British charity organizer William MacAskill told Hiltzik regarding the ice bucket challenge, “The most successful charities will be those that are best at soliciting funds, not those that are best at making the world a better place.”

Exactly.

How many of these people even know what ALS is before they pull out their bucket of ice, video camera and checkbook?

But hey, keep videotaping yourself dumping ice on your head. #icebucketchallenge #cuzitstrendy