Not sunk in, Endless ice buckets

It’s odd, it doesn’t feel like my mom being gone has really sunk in yet despite it now being one week since she passed.  It feels like I am still able to pick up the phone and call her or drive be her community pool and see her out there chatting with the pool ladies.  Of course I can no longer do these things but I wonder when that reality will become more accepted internally.

On Monday I contacted pretty much everyone that needed to be contacted regarding my mom’s death.  My current focus is getting the will filed with the clerk of courts and getting my mom’s remains in my possession.  Due to what seems stupid rules and procedures, my mom has still not been cremated.  I am hoping it finally happens today.

I figure it would be a good thing to not focus exclusively on my mom’s passing, after all it is a pretty sad subject.  I thought a good old fashioned rant would help clear the pipes.  Let’s talk about the ice bucket challenge.

For those of you that are living in a dark cave somewhere, the ice bucket challenge is this years version of the Harlem Shake, a viral phenomenon where people are dumping ice water on their heads on video to raise ALS (Lou Gehrigs Diesease) awareness.  Prior to dumping water on your head you are supposed to name other individuals that you are challenging to do the same thing.  If you don’t take the challenge you are supposedly tasked with donating $100 to ALS, if you decide to go the ice route, a smaller $10 donation is advised.

Ok let me first say something positive, raising awareness about ALS is a good thing as is raising awareness about any serious disease or ailment.  But come on,how many people honestly care about ALS awareness that dump the ice? If you ask me, precious few.   This is all about looking silly, and encouraging others to look silly,which I guess is fine but the lemming mentality of it is something that I certainly don’t embrace myself.

However the thing that really perturbs me is when you start to look at where the national ALS foundation spends it’s money.  Their most recent public filing shows that only 22% of the revenue they took in was actually given back out to help ALS research.   The CEO of the organization was earning 325K in 2012 and every single position listed in their filing was paying at least 6 figures.

Unfortunately this is a very common scenario.  Somebody a long time ago realized that preying on the good will and charity of others is a great way to make a living.  Very few individuals that donate to a charity will take that extra step to actually look into how that organization is spending the money that is so generously donated to them.  For those of us that like to look behind the curtain, http://guidestar.org contains the full disclosure information for just about any charity you can imagine.    To me, skimming 78% off the top for salary and expenses is pretty egregious, unfortunately there are many examples of charities that give even less back, one of the biggest being Suzy G Komen.

So what exactly am I saying? Don’t do the ice bucket challenge? No.  If you want to do the challenge feel free, it’s your right to do so.  Personally I won’t be participating due to my built in dislike of going with the flow. But I would encourage you to be more picky about who and how you donate money to a cause.  Find ways to be charitable in a more direct manner instead of throwing money at charity custodians that sleep just fine at night skimming large chunks of money off the top for personal gain.