冰桶挑战超两亿善款该怎么花

    以这些标准来看，ALS协会得分很高。例如，慈善导航最近的报告称，ALS协会得到了最高的四星评级，部分原因是其将2013财年收入的72%用于项目和服务；11%作为行政管理成本，资金募集开支占16%。

    “冰桶挑战”促使捐款金额猛增，却让ALS协会很难复制其在当前财年取得的乐观的监管数据。慈善导航的年度开支指标会对慈善机构一年的资金进行评估。慈善导航CEO肯•伯格告诉《财富》杂志：“事实上，大多数慈善机构募集的捐款金额都会有波动，因此我们计划采用多年期评估。但目前依旧用的是年度评估的方法。”

    这意味着，按照慈善导航目前的要求，为了达到最近一年实现的72%的项目开支标准，ALS协会需要在截至明年一月的财年结束之前，从4,180万美元的“冰桶挑战”善款中拿出3,000万美元用于研究和教育。

    这是个令ALS协会措手不及的挑战。

    协会首席分会关系与发展官兰斯•斯劳特表示：“如果你的预算增加了一倍，你不可能在一年内全部花完。如果一家年收入300万美元的组织某一年得到1,000万美元的善款，这家组织不可能在这一年花完三倍的钱。我们将与慈善监督机构合作。他们能够理解这种特殊情况。”斯劳特表示，如果没有年底最终期限的限制，ALS协会的董事会可以仔细规划如何利用这笔捐款，为协会目前的重要工作提供资金：疾病与可能的治疗方法研究，为ALS患者提供周到的护理，以及倡导有利于ALS患者的公共政策。

    在八月初的时候，ALS协会尚未意识到“冰桶挑战”能带来多少捐款。当时，它拨给美国、英国、法国、加拿大、瑞士、以色列和澳大利亚的科学家们21笔资金，总计350万美元。ALS协会首席科学家露西•布鲁英在一份声明中表示，拨款全部用于“探索ALS的有效疗法。”

    斯劳特说，在发表声明之后ALS协会收到的大笔捐款，“让我们确信，我们在第二年和第三年仍然有足够资金来资助研究。”这种情况也适用于该协会计划新开的ALS诊所。协会在“冰桶挑战”疯狂传播之前曾计划在今年新开11家ALS诊所。目前，ALS协会已经开设了34家诊所，专为ALS患者提供多学科治疗；斯劳特表示，开设新诊所“是一次信心的飞跃”。他说道，最近的大笔捐款“让我们有机会[为诊所]提供更多资金。”

    “冰桶挑战”活动中的特定因素让如何使用善款的问题变得更简单：迄今募集的4,180万美元捐款均来自不受限制的个人捐赠。这意味着，该笔资金没有任何附加条件，这与传统的捐款有所不同。传统捐款有时会被指定用于慈善机构的特定使命。

    卡拉布里亚表示：“从非盈利机构的角度来说，所有捐款都是好的，但某些更好。”拥有灵活性对ALS协会来说是好消息，它可以考虑许多选择。

    ALSA has measured up fairly well in trying to meet those expectations. According to Charity Navigator’s latest report, for instance, ALSA earned the highest four-star rating, in part, for spending 72% of its fiscal year 2013 revenue on programs and services; 11% went to administration costs while fundraising expenses ate up 16%.

    While the ice bucket challenge has prompted an onslaught of donations, it’s chilled any prospect of ALSA duplicating those rosy watchdog figures in its current fiscal year. Charity Navigator’s annual spending metrics measure how charities distribute money they’ve generated that same year. “The reality is that fundraising for most charities is up and down, so we’re moving toward a multi-year review,” Charity Navigator CEO Ken Berger told Fortune. “Right now, though, it’s an annual snapshot.”

    That means—as Charity Navigator’s requirements stand now—in order to replicate its most recent 72% programming expenditure, ALSA would need to spend just over $30 million of its $41.8 million in ice bucket money on research and education by the end of its fiscal year in January.

    That’s a challenge ALSA doesn’t plan on meeting.

    “When you’re doubling a budget, it can’t be spent all in same year,” says Lance Slaughter, chief chapter relations and development officer at ALSA. “If a [hypothetical] $3 million organization gets a $10 million bequest one year, there’s no way the members of its board can thoughtfully spend three times as much [in one year's time],” he says. “We’re going to work with these watchdog groups. They understand that anomalies take place.” Without the constraints of the year-end deadline, Slaughter says, the ALSA board will be able to thoughtfully plan how to use the money to further fund the organization’s current priorities: researching the disease and possible cures, providing compassionate care for ALS patients, and advocating for public policies that benefit people living with the disease.

    In early August, before fully realizing just how much money the ice bucket campaign would generate, ALSA awarded 21 new grants worth $3.5 million to scientists in the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Canada, Switzerland, Israel and Australia. The grants are all focused on “developing effective therapies for ALS,” Lucie Bruijn, ALSA’s chief scientist, said in a statement.

    The influx of donations that ALSA has received since making that announcement “gives us confidence that we’ll have funding for these grants in their second and third years,” Slaughter says. The same holds true for the 11 new ALS clinics the organization had planned to open this year prior to the ice bucket campaign going viral. The organization already operates 34 clinics that provide multidisciplinary therapies to ALS patients; opening the new ones “was a leap of faith,” Slaughter says. The wave of donations recently is “an opportunity to provide greater funding [to the clinics],” he says.

    There’s one element of the ice bucket campaign that will make the challenge of deciding how to spend the money a bit easier: the $41.8 million that ALSA has raised has come from individual donations that are unrestricted. That means that unlike some more traditional donations that are sometimes designated to a specific aspect of a charity’s mission, this money has arrived at ALSA with no strings attached.

    “From a non-profit’s perspective, all donations are great but some are better than others,” Calabrese says. And it’s good that ALSA has that flexibility because it has lots of options to consider.