ALS Ice Bucket Challenge Is Dying Out But Still Bringing In Donations — You Won’t Believe The Total

A month ago, you couldn’t go anywhere on the internet without running into an ALS Ice Bucket Challenge video. Everyone from your friends and family to major celebrities and politicians were posting videos of themselves dumping freezing cold water over their heads to raise money for ALS research. Like most internet trends, people seem to have forgotten about the Ice Bucket Challenge quickly. You don’t see many new Ice Bucket Challenge videos anymore and few are still talking about it.

However, the donations jump-started by the Ice Bucket Challenge initiative are still rolling in. The total amount earned thanks to the awareness efforts of the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge has reached an unbelievable sum. According to Cincinnati, the Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) Association has reported that the Ice Bucket Challenge has urged donors to contribute a total of $115 for ALS research.

The ALS Association sent out a letter thanking those who donated and participated in the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge:

“Because of the unprecedented level of awareness and support the Ice Bucket Challenge is generating, we now have the opportunity to consider more exciting and innovated projects than ever before,” said President Barbara Newhouse in the report.

The Ice Bucket Challenge earned the ALS Association an exponentially larger number of donations than in past years. The ALS Association had earned approximately $98.2 million by August (compared to $2.7 million donated last year). ALS Ice Bucket Challenge videos have been disappearing rapidly from the internet since then but somehow another $17 million has been donated to fund ALS research.

The nonprofit organization was worth about $20 million in 2013, acquiring most of their funding through grants and sparse donations. Almost $2 million of the that went to pay the salaries of the ALS Association’s management and president.

“We are 100 percent committed to responsibly stewarding every dollar donated to the ALS Association,” Newhouse said at the close of the letter.

Since ALS is a rare disease, victims and researchers usually have difficulty drumming up support for the cause. But the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge broke through to the mainstream. Now you’d be hard-pressed to find someone who uses the internet and doesn’t know about the debilitating disease.

According to the BBC, the outreach of the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge is staggering just in terms of how many people contributed. About 2.4 million Ice Bucket Challenge videos have been posted to Facebook, with 28 million people promoting or interacting with the Ice Bucket Challenge cause. More than 3.7 million ALS Ice Bucket Challenge videos have been uploaded to Instagram, or videos that have hashtags pertaining to the Ice Bucket Challenge.

To find out what the next ALS Ice Bucket Challenge will be, click here.

While the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge has done a lot of good, some Ice Bucket Challenge videos ended tragically. A firefighter recently passed away helping students participate in the Ice Bucket Challenge.