The ALS Association is working to again prove that even when an idea is all wet it can be an incredible fundraiser. The purveyors of the infamous Ice Bucket Challenge is beginning an 18-market rollout of its latest sopping concept — The CEO Soak.
Both ideas are similar in that neither came from internal brainstorming. The Ice Bucket Challenge was a viral event launched by the mom of an amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) patient. The CEO Soak is the idea of a volunteer in the Western Pennsylvania ALS chapter of Pittsburgh whose sister died from the disease.
Ryan Reczek, senior vice president, development for ALS, was the executive director for the chapter. “It took place as a stand-alone event in Pittsburgh from 2017 to 2020,” said Reczek.
A volunteer, Mike Daniels, was an executive for a commercial real estate firm. He was leaving his office on a 90-plus degree temperature day in Pittsburgh when a fountain started “and he thought it would be great to go running through that,” said Reczek.
That turned into the idea. Each event might look a little different to highlight a city’s unique features or personalities of the community, from jumping into a pool, to standing in a fountain, or taking an ice bucket of water.
The first CEO Soak in 2017 had 20 participants and raised $50,000 for the chapter. It was $100,000 in 2019 and 2020. The event raised $650,000 from eight markets during 2021 and $750,000 from 10 markets during 2022. The goal this year is $1.1 million from 18 markets, said Reczek.
The Ice Bucket Challenge was a viral event. While the desire is to make the CEO Soak a national event, there is no daydream that it will hit the $115 million raised during six weeks of 2014 from 2.5 million donors.
Reczek realizes that while the Ice Bucket Challenge was a sensation, ALS is a relatively rare disease. According to the most recent statistics from the National Institutes of Health, the number of people with ALS worldwide will increase from 2015 people in 2015 to 376,674 in 2040. It is projected that 1.8 to 2 people per 100,000 will be diagnosed each year, which implies 5,760 to 6,400 new diagnoses per year.
He thinks that events such as the CEO Soak get a community involved, which could lead to additional post-event donors in an era when statistics show the number of individual donors has been declining for all philanthropy.
Events are “the front door of an organizations,” said Reczek. The idea is for a community to find a volunteer chair who can leverage to influence a network of participants. For example, there are four events planned for Florida and an event in northwest Arkansas brought in $115,000.
“It is a real opportunity to bring people into the work,” said Reczek.
