The Ice Bucket Challenge became popular on social media nearly a year ago as a way to get individuals to choose between donating to charity and getting doused in cold water, but ever since former Boston College baseball player Pete Frates changed the challenge’s focus to ALS, the campaign has gone viral and reached countless celebrities, professional athletes, and even President Barack Obama. Thanks to Frates, a patient advocate who was awarded the Stephen Heywood Patients Today Award in 2012 for his fundraising work, the ALS Association has raised over $70.2 million in the past month and put pressure on other nonprofits to follow an equally-profitable social media model.

From Obama and George W. Bush to Oprah Winfrey and Mark Zuckerberg, the “Strike Out ALS Ice Bucket Challenge” has been promoted by several of the wealthiest and most influential figures in America. The ALS Association, which only raised $2.5 million during the same period last year, now has a great deal of money to use towards research into amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, a neurodegenerative illness commonly known as Lou Gehrig’s disease.

“It puts us in a whole different ballgame to find treatments and cures for this disease,” ALS spokeswoman Carrie Munk told The New York Times.

Philanthropy expert Beth Kanter, author of “Measuring the Networked Nonprofit,” explained to NPR why the campaign has proven to be so successful.

“I think part of the success is that really it appeals to kind of the way that we’re using social media. We’re always taking selfies, we’re sharing details about our lives. So why not, you know, do a little social narcissism for a good cause?”

Kanter believes that the Ice Bucket Challenge must be putting panic-inducing pressure on the staff for other nonprofit charities to come up with a social media campaign of their own. However, Laura Putnam, charwoman of the American Heart Association’s Greater Bay Area 2020 Task Force, has nothing but praise for the work ALS has been doing.

“We really look at this as a positive thing,” said Putnam. “The success of the challenge is a testament to the power of social media to raise awareness over health conditions and funds for vital research.”