Over half a million Irish people donate to the Ice Bucket Challenge

LIKECHARITY, the mobile fundraising company behind the Ice Bucket Challenge, released figures showing over half a million Irish people have donated to the Ice Bucket Challenge craze via text.

These figures mean the Ice Bucket Challenge has quickly become the most popular social media craze of the year, surpassing the No Make-Up Selfie that raised over €1 million for cancer research in March. LIKECHARITY exclusively revealed that over 500,000 people have donated after completing the Ice Bucket Challenge, compared to the 259,000 make-up free ladies who donated back in March.

The challenge, in which people are filming themselves dumping buckets of ice cold water over their head and then posting the video online, turned pro-active last week when texts began flooding in for the Irish Motor Neuron Disease Association. Donations saw a huge spike two weekends ago, with over €200,000 being donated on Sunday 24^th August alone, and have continued to climb since.

“We noticed the trend beginning to grow in New Zealand a few months back.’ says John Kyne, COO of LIKECHARITY. ‘Knowing Irish people are always quick to help a good cause, and have a bit of craic doing so, we battened down the hatches in preparation. But once again the Irish people have gone above and beyond, eclipsing all other viral campaigns by miles.”

The Ice Bucket Challenge marks the third viral campaign for the Dublin based company, who provide their text donation service free of charge to Irish charities. Including this recent surge, LIKECHARITY have raised close to €4 million for the Irish charity sector since their creation in January 2013.

Aisling Farrell, Chief Executive of the IMNDA was quick to praise LIKECHARITY’s ability to combine the power of social media and simplicity of text messaging:

“IMNDA could never have imagined the public response that we have received through the MND Ice Bucket Challenge. We are over whelmed with the support the Irish public have shown us and our MND community, their generosity has touched people with MND’s lives, made them smile though they are living with this terrible illness and provided much needed funds to continue services they desperately require. None of this would have been made possible without the commitment and dedication of the LIKECHARITY team and service. This campaign took everyone by surprise and LIKECHARITY have supported the IMNDA each step on this incredible ‘chilly’ journey. It just shows the impact and power of mobile and social communications.”

(You can watch my Ice Bucket Challenge here, Gordon’s on this link and Michael’s here!)