People everywhere have heard of the ALS Bucket Challenge. It’s on Youtube, on Twitter, and probably on everyone’s Facebook feeds. The challenge is rumored to have started when Chris Kennedy, a professional golfer, decided to dump a bucket of water on his head and gave $100 to a charity of his choice. He chose the ALS foundation because his wife’s cousin was suffering from ALS. The original challenge (or dare), was circulating with no need to donate to a charity, but Kennedy and his family did it within themselves and their community, and they all decided to make a donation to the ALS charity. They put up videos of everyone doing it on a Youtube channel, and within a few days, they had over 400 videos.

The video was seen by hundreds of people, and was sent to Pat Quinn, who used to coach baseball in Boston University, and he showed it to a variety of professional athletes and celebrities. The thing that stirred it up has now spread to what we heard is over 1.2 million views on Facebook and over $23 million dollars in donations.

Yet people are still angry.

Many people have complained on Facebook and social media that the “#ALSBucketChallenge is a stupid idea”. Ahem xoJane. People are complaining about the “water situation” and how dumping a bucket of water over their heads is a waste of water. People are upset that some people on YouTube are doing the challenge and aren’t donating. Well, we’re here today to debate the facts:

Why the #ALSBucketChallenge works and why you shouldn’t be upset over it.

Complaint #1: But my friends on Facebook are doing it and they’re not even donating!

Okay, so you saw that your friend has tagged you and they’re like “either do this or donate $100″. Where did the part about donating regardless go? Apparently in some versions, the idea of this was to donate either $10 and do the ice Bucket Challenge. A lot of people don’t (or don’t mention they do).

First of all, yes, not everyone is going to do the ice bucket challenge and donate. They’re going to be doing it for fun, to get a kick out of it on social media, and they’re laughingly play along with the whole idea of “donating for charity oh-la-la”. These people represent a part of humanity that doesn’t represent the rest of us as a whole. There are always going to be people that just want their 5 minutes of fame in any situation. That doesn’t mean the whole concept of the challenge is a bad one. There are also those that haven’t been nominated and just donate out of their free will: why don’t you pay attention to those people instead?

The Als Bucket Challenge has raised over $23 million challenge since it started until today. This beats the last year’s reported $20,000 within the same period by over 1100 times. It’s working. Even if you don’t see people donating, it doesn’t mean they don’t.

Complaint #2: People are just doing it for fun, not even caring about the charity.

A lot of people do stuff because they just want in on the hype… But it really doesn’t matter to you or to the charity does it?

If they’re doing it even if they aren’t really doing it for the charity, at least they’re still spreading the word out. Some people just dump bucket of water on their heads for fun — they’re going to do it regardless. Some people bandwagon onto anything. You could make the worst out of any situation. But instead of focusing on those people, try to focus on the ones that actually do it because they care. And from what I’ve seen, a lot of people do.

Even if someone is doing it for fun, it’s still spreading… We’re talking about it now. Viral things spark controversy. By people knowing about the challenge, it’s better for the ALS charities to get people to actually listen to them.

Have you heard about ALS before this challenge? 80% of you probably haven’t. That’s how you know it’s working.

Complaint #3: It’s NOT spreading awareness by laying out what ALS is!

Do most fundraising events like marathons and tower climbs do their job by spreading awareness for their respective charities? No.

The point of the awareness is not to teach you about ALS, because we’re sure in this day and age, no one has the attention span to pay attention to a 10 minute informational seminar. The point of it is to let people know ALS exists. Like in advertising, having heard of the brand is all it takes for it to be recognizable. In this case, having people know of ALS is something more than money could buy.

A lot of people won’t care what it is and do the challenge; but then again they’re not going to care if you straight up tell them either. Most people that do it it will be curious, and they will look into it if they care. From the looks of thing, we’re seeing a lot more people caring than not.

Complaint #4: Why are we donating to this instead of every other charity?

We’re not going to say other charities aren’t important, but the ALS foundation has always been a smaller, more unknown charity than other ones like Cancer research. It’s the same analogy as “having the mom-and-pop store win for once”. There are lot of small businesses that don’t succeed, but if one does, congratulate them instead of bringing them down. It’s not a perfect world where every charity could be recognized. We’re working on things one at a time, and with everyone’s help in times like these, it’s starting to look a little bit more positive.

Complaint #5: They’re wasting water by dumping it on their heads when California is in a drought! There could be other ways to do this challenge.

Yes, there could probably be other ways. You could  jump in a lake or whatever… but is anyone actually going to watch that or even do that?

Remember, it started within a small community. Water may be really important for those in the West right now (and we feel for you guys!) but a bucket of water isn’t really going to do much harm. Consider how much water you spend a day in the shower, flushing the toilet, washing your hands, washing your car, washing your dishes and more! Now if you were to add those things up it would amount to about 80-100 gallons of water from a single person per day. Comparatively, a bucket of water is about 8 litres.

That water is not wasted. It goes into the soil, into the runoff, and is either filtered through the sewage or evaporated into the air and collected into the clouds and etc etc. It’ll come back eventually. Those are dimes and nickles compared to shipping water to those that need it.

You could also say, oh the people in Africa need water, why can’t we donate to them?

The fact of the matter is water is so expensive to ship and requires so much fuel and resources that it isn’t the worth the amount of dimes and nickels.

So no, we’re not wasting water. We’re using this as an effective way to communicate a point to millions of people. If you can find way of spreading this information that people will enjoy watching and sharing, then go ahead. But going viral isn’t something that happens very often, and we should just be happy for those people suffering from ALS it did.

Complaint #6: We don’t know where the money is going to even do or go towards!

Forbes will give you a more detailed answer of where their money will go, but in short terms: they’re using it to conduct further research into finding a cure (they have recently found a breakthrough which we’re all excited for!), as well as giving support to those who suffer from it. Hospital costs, treatments, and staffing all require a lot of money. This will help those that have ALS and their families a lot.

The ALS association is a highly respected charity (unlike certain ones). Yes, there will be management costs to pay their employees, but you can’t expect people to work for free, much like neither you and I should.

This will have cut down their marketing costs by a lot as well, since going viral is basically free publicity.

This challenge has given hope to a lot of ALS survivors. And instead of being bitter about it, just be happy that everyone is coming together and we’re contributing to something that’s greater than us.

Tell us…

Do you still feel anything else against the ALS challenge?

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