Carrie Munk was the Senior Vice President for Communications & Marketing at The ALS Association during the Ice Bucket Challenge era. After spending eight years working for the Red Cross as the Director of Strategic Communication and Planning, she transitioned to working for the American Lung Association before going to the ALS Association. Her knowledge and expertise in the nonprofit world are expansive. Munk loves storytelling and talked to AMA about her journey in the nonprofit world, sharing lessons that she learned along the way.
The statistics Munk gave were vast and astonishing. The Ice Bucket Challenge ignited 90 million Google search results, the 6th most searched term in the world in 2014, and 17 million people wrote videos to Facebook, and those videos were watched by 440 million people a total of 10 billion times. According to Google, the challenge alone turned a little-known disorder into a global conversation.
What is ironic about this world-wide marketing campaign was that it was started by three men who had ALS and not from ALS Association. The ALS corporation did not create this but utilized the message to their advantage. The nonprofit did something that entirely is unknown in that sector, full financial transparency. ALS would report daily the number of donations flooding into the organization to showcase how one movement can cause a domino effect for change. They raised a total of $115 million and never asked for a single cent.
By the end of the Zoom meeting with Munk, AMA members felt moved by the journey she took us through. The gratitude Munk received from the ALS community members made all the trials and tribulations worth it for her. She loves her work and is still passionate about the work she does every day.
You can visit (https://www.als.org/) for more information.
-Lexi Silverman