The ice bucket challenge - Module 4

C1 Advanced · Multiple Choice Reading · Advanced Expert Student's Resource Book, Pearson Education

You are going to read an article about charity fundraising. For questions 1–6, choose the answer (A, B, C or D) which you think fits best according to the text.

I finally succumbed to social pressure and invited some colleagues to film me having a bucket of iced water tipped over my head. This is the ice bucket challenge. The deal is that people film themselves being drenched, donate money to their local Motor Neurone Disease charity, and then nominate three further people for the same treatment. It is fundraising genius and it went viral at some point. Lady Gaga did it; Mark Zuckerberg did it. By the time you read this, I imagine every celebrity on the planet will have done it. Social pressure is a powerful thing and it's refreshing to see it being used to spread smiles and encourage a generous spirit. This isn't new, of course. Charities have long sought celebrity endorsements and getting famous people to make fools of themselves is part of that venerable tradition. Peer pressure can also produce reluctant givers. Adriaan Soetevent, an economist at the University of Groningen, studied charitable collections in an open basket versus a closed collection bag. The open basket elicited larger donations. And in another clever field experiment run by three economists, Stefano DellaVigna, John List and Ulrike Malmendier, fundraisers went door-to-door raising money. Some households, chosen randomly, had received a flyer warning them exactly when the fundraisers would be around: this warning dramatically increased the chance that the door wouldn't be opened. Not all of us welcome the opportunity to give money to randomly selected charities, it seems. In this case, however, the social element seemed to be a source of joy, and surely, the ice bucket challenge was a good thing, raising money for a worthy cause while giving us a good chuckle into the bargain. But any good economist has to ask – and I do apologise about this: a good thing compared to what? Some critics of the challenge suggested that it might represent a 'zero-sum game' – in other words, that more money for Motor Neurone Disease meant less for other charities. The evidence for that proposition is thin, as it happens, but even if the many tens of millions raised by the ice bucket challenge were brand-new charitable giving, we could still ask where that money would best be spent. The strength of a viral giving campaign, however, is also its weakness: people join in for a laugh because their friends have put them up to it rather than because of a logical analysis of the most worthy cause. Motor Neurone Disease is a truly dreadful condition but so is cancer, ebola or simple starvation. In a world of limited generosity and finite resources, who is to say which cause should be at the head of the queue? The fact that ice bucketeers were donating to a Motor Neurone Disease charity feels entirely arbitrary. If another charity had happened to be the beneficiary instead, very little else about the viral campaign would have changed. Would that have been a better situation? GiveWell is an organisation which seems well placed to answer such questions: it sets out to give donors the information they need to make the most effective donations. It sounds like an impossible job. GiveWell's approach is to find cost-effective, evidence-based approaches such as distributing anti-malarial bednets and then search for transparent, efficient charities pursuing that approach. One of their top recommendations, for example, is the Schistosomiasis Control Initiative – incidentally, a charity that would benefit from a catchier name. It organises treatment for parasitic worms, a very unappealing cause indeed. But the worms can do a lot of harm and are absurdly inexpensive to treat, hence the finding that the SCI offers value for your donated money. In the end, I sent a few pounds of my ice bucket donation to the Motor Neurone Disease Association. It would have felt wrong, somehow, to do otherwise. I sent a more substantial donation to SCI, surely one of the least media-friendly charities on the planet. All lives are equally valuable but some lives may be saved far more cheaply than others. It seems strange not to respond to a philanthropic bargain. No doubt, some will find this line of reasoning colder than a bucket full of iced water. But the truth is that whenever we give money to one cause rather than another, we're making a decision about how deserving that cause is. When a social media campaign gathers momentum, it is human nature to make that decision spontaneously and without a moment's reflection. It feels good. But feeling good and doing good aren't the same thing.

It was a very clever way of generating charitable donations.

It unfairly targeted certain people in the public eye.

It used social pressure in an undesirable way.

Its success took everyone by surprise.

What view of the ice bucket challenge is expressed in the first paragraph?

The most generous people prefer to donate discreetly.

Aggressive forms of fundraising can be counterproductive.

Some people may only donate to charity to keep up appearances.

Targeting certain households can make charity fundraising more effective.

What do the two research studies mentioned in the second paragraph suggest?

a question posed by the writer himself.

a theory which is popular amongst economists.

a claim made by critics of the ice bucket challenge.

an amount of money raised for one particular charity.

The phrase that proposition in line 38 refers to

the challenge was a fair way to raise money.

people taking part in the challenge were really sincere.

those receiving funds from the challenge were in genuine need.

other charities are likely to find success with similar challenges.

In the fourth paragraph, the writer is questioning whether

promote the cause of less well-known charities.

give guidance to those intending to make charitable donations.

encourage charities to provide useful equipment rather than money.

ensure that funds raised by charities reach their intended beneficiaries.

According to the writer, the main aim of the GiveWell organisation is to

now regrets taking part in the ice bucket challenge.

Available as a free printable PDF worksheet with an optional answer key.

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