Ice Bucket Challenge: Creative fundraiser or narcissistic slacktivism?

VANCOUVER (NEWS1130) – The ALS Ice Bucket Challenge has raised tens of millions of dollars for research over the past few weeks and also raised some interesting questions about viral fundraising fads.

As a marketing gimmick, the challenge is fantastic: It’s short, immediately understandable, and easy to do.

But as we are flooded by online challenges and videos of people either dousing themselves in ice water or writing a cheque to the ALS Association, one critic of the campaign calls it narcissistic slacktivism.

Scott Gilmore, a former diplomat and founder of the non-profit organization Building Markets, says the Ice Bucket Challenge is a horrible reason to donate.

In Macleans Magazine, he writes there are finite resources to donate to medical research and other worthy causes. When we decide where to spend our charitable dollars, there are three factors to consider when donating money:

1. Where is the greatest need?
2. Where will the money have the greatest influence?
3. What is the most urgent problem?

Gilmore says the ALS Challenge fails on all counts.

“First, ALS research is not an especially great need in public health. It is classified as a rare disease and, thankfully, only about 600 people die from it every year in Canada,” he writes.

“That sounds like a lot, but that is not even close to the top 20 most fatal diseases according to StatsCan (the top three being cancer, at 72,000 deaths per year; heart disease, at 47,000; and cerebrovascular disease, 13,000).”

But a man from Surrey who suffers from ALS says the campaign is more than just a gimmick.

Jack Evans, 78, tells the Surrey Now the icy shock gives people a realistic sense of what the symptoms of Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) feel like.

ALS is a degenerative nerve disease which deteriorates the spinal cord and muscles and can eventually lead to paralysis.