Post by Raquel Herring on Oct 9, 2014 20:28:46 GMT -5
One non-profit organization that I have not had the chance to discuss is the ALS Association. This non-profit organization was founded in 1869 but did not get international attention until many years later. The ALS Association website explains what ALS is by saying that, “Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is a progressive neurodegenerative disease that affects nerve cells in the brain and the spinal cord. Motor neurons reach from the brain to the spinal cord and from the spinal cord to the muscles throughout the body. The progressive degeneration of the motor neurons in ALS eventually leads to their death. When the motor neurons die, the ability of the brain to initiate and control muscle movement is lost. With voluntary muscle action progressively affected, patients in the later stages of the disease may become totally paralyzed”. The New York times explained what the organization’s social campaign was recently, “People make a video of themselves dumping a bucket of ice water on their heads, post it on Facebook, Instagram or other social media sites, and then challenge friends to do the same within 24 hours or donate $100 to ALS. (Many do both.)”. They also explained the critics points of view by stating that “There are a lot of things wrong with the Ice Bucket Challenge, but the most annoying is that it’s basically narcissism masked as altruism,” said Arielle Pardes, a writer for Vice. On Slate, Will Oremus urged people to take the “no ice bucket challenge” and just donate the money”. Even with some criticism the campaign was able to get large amounts of donations and a Forbes online article states that there was “a 3,500% increase from the $2.8 million that the ALS Association raised during the same time period last year”. Some fundraising advice that I learned from the Google Hangouts were for organizations to become well known before going on social media campaigns for donations. Another good tip was for organizations to do matching challenges and also to make it easy for people to donate money. ALS was not very well known before the social campaign. I believe that what helped promote the ice bucket challenge was how everyone was doing it from celebrities to middle school children. By challenging people the organization did the matching challenges that are effective on social media. Those factors contributed to the success of the ALS Association ice bucket challenge.
www.nytimes.com/2014/08/18/business/ice-bucket-challenge-has-raised-millions-for-als-association.html?_r=0
www.forbes.com/sites/dandiamond/2014/08/29/the-als-ice-bucket-challenge-has-raised-100m-but-its-finally-cooling-off/
www.nytimes.com/2014/08/18/business/ice-bucket-challenge-has-raised-millions-for-als-association.html?_r=0
www.forbes.com/sites/dandiamond/2014/08/29/the-als-ice-bucket-challenge-has-raised-100m-but-its-finally-cooling-off/