Ice Bucket Challenge: The best charity videos from business leaders
A look back at participation from the likes of Richard Branson, Sheryl Sandberg and Bill Gates
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Your support makes all the difference.Unless you’ve been living under a rock, over the past few weeks you would have watched a cascade of videos featuring individuals being drenched in freezing cold water.
The ALS ice bucket challenge has been the viral campaign of the summer – and with good reason. It helped to raise $98.2m for the Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) Association between 29 July and 28 August alone, compared to $2.7m last year.
As we move into autumn the emergence of videos appears to have slowed – although that’s probably because there’s hardly anyone left to participate in the global charity drive.
Among the millions upon millions of videos posted on the likes of Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, are those showing some of the world’s most famous business leaders, including Richard Branson, Sheryl Sandberg and Bill Gates.
In case you missed them, here’s a look back at their efforts - hopefully they donated more than the suggested $10…
Richard Branson, Virgin Group founder
Phil J Clarke, Tesco Ireland chief executive
Dan Doctoroff and Mike Bloomberg, CEO and founder of Bloomberg
Wendy Clark, Coca-Cola senior vice president
Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook co-founder
Bill Gates, Microsoft Corporation co-founder
Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook COO
Also taking up the challenge at Zuckerberg's request, the executive was joined by a host of Facebook employees.
Tim Cook, Apple CEO
US musician Michael Franti did the honours at Apple's campus in California.
The ice bucket challenge raises money and awareness for the neuro-degenerative disease amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), alos known as Motor Neurone Disease (MND) or Lou Gehrig's Disease in the US.
It has been criticised in some quarters as an exercise in vanity but there is no doubt that it has made an impact.
Shannon Murray, an actor, writer and disability rights campaigner, told the BBC: "It's been very celebrity-orientated and it plays into our culture of putting everything about ourselves out there on social media. [...] But actually the bottom line is that people weren't talking about MND two months ago, and now they are."
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