The Importance of Creativity – Ice Bucket Challenge for ALS

The Ice Bucket Challenge is all people are talking about.

Throughout social media right now very nice people are willingly having buckets of ice cold water poured over them to raise awareness and money for ALS.

Suddenly – everyone is an expert on ALS, a horrible and fatal disease which, prior to the bucket challenge, was almost unknown to most people.
In paNOW.com’s Community Group News I started doing some promotions for the local chapter of ALS a few years ago and had to educate myself on this disease. I had absolutely no idea.

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.

Now – because of creative thinking-people not only know what ALS is, but are willing to video themselves having ice water poured on their heads and/or donate money.
THIS is thinking outside the box.

Court proceedings

Guilty pleas entered by man involved in robbery of young volleyball player

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Helping hand

Royal Purple Elks mark Speech and Hearing Month with donation to Princess Margaret School

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PERMANENT SHELTER

City of P.A. asking property and land owners for help in finding new shelter location

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Fundraising and promotions is a difficult gig. Year after year organizations will go ahead with walks, and posters, calendars and barbeques.

A few years ago MOVEMBER emerged as a brilliantly creative way to raise awareness of Prostrate Cancer, talk about prevention and raise a lot of money.

Now this.

To date (it is August 23rd about noon as I write this) more than 62.5 million dollars has been raised from the Ice Bucket Challenge alone. That is only 25 days. Because of the requirement to nominate others…the challenge is growing exponentially with no end in site, making this promotional fundraiser more successful than anyone could imagine.

Creative people, I have to say, are usually at the low end of the financial platform and the professions that attract creative people are not as respected, generally, as much as doctors, lawyers, etcetera.

However, ideas like The Bucket Challenge comes from people who think outside the box…who are able to envision a completely new concept – or take an idea and tailor it to what they need – to create something extra-ordinary.

In this twitter world we live in: a world of constantly flashing news bites, hundreds of promotions, thousands of fundraisers, Facebook newsfeeds and tweets, a new idea that is daring and bold is bound to be a big hit. People need to see and do something new. They also need to feel like they are doing something great.

So, here’s to the new. Here’s to the creative people that come up with amazing ideas that we all love and that do amazing things in this world.

Now the challenge is for all organizations to look outside their box of decreasingly successful promotions and fundraisers to create something new.

The ALS website is found at http://goo.gl/KueAlJ . Donate generously. I did the ice bucket challenge today. My Facebook friends can testify.

I'd like to thank Viki Neubuhr Keays for nominating me. I challenge any reader to do have a bucket of ice cold water thrown on you while being videotaped and/or donate money. You have 24 hours.