Chances are your Facebook news feed has been flooded with videos of people — well known and not — dousing themselves with buckets of ice water at the request of friends or family to raise money for and awareness about Lou Gehrig’s Disease.
 

Ethel Kennedy and New York Giants players are among the A-listers who’ve joined the trend, which has also been making the rounds on Twitter and Instagram.
 

The campaign is a viral movement called the “Ice Bucket Challenge” designed to raise awareness for Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also known as ALS. And NBC News reports  donations have been pouring in to the ALS Association.
 

Carrie Munk, the group’s spokeswoman, said the organization collected $1.35 million from July 29 to Aug. 11. That’s not counting donations to chapter offices around the country, Munk said. During the same time period last year, donations totaled $22,000.
 

“The monetary contributions are amazing but there is so much value to the visibility that this is generating,” Munk said of the challenge. “It’s unquantifiable.”
 

The campaign started in Massachusetts with former Boston College baseball player Pete Frates, who was diagnosed two years ago with the progressive neurodegenerative disease that affects nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord. It leads to muscle weakness, difficulty speaking, breathing, and swallowing.
 

Frates posted his own ice bucket challenge video to the tune of Vanilla Ice’s “Ice, Ice Baby” and dared a few people to try it. A social media movement followed. After posting their ice bucket videos to social media, participants nominate others to do it and keep the cycle going.

If those challenged don’t accept within 24 hours, they’re asked to donate to ALS research or to the charity of their choice.
 

In doing her own ice bucket challenge, Ethel Kennedy nominated President Obama to take the ice bucket challenge.
 

Giants receiver Victor Cruz also doused himself with ice water last weekend and then challenged the Giants’ co-owners John Mara and Steve Tisch to do the same.
 

A day later, the 59-year-old Mara, wearing a white Giants T-shirt and black shorts, allowed Cruz to dump a Gatorade tub filled with ice water over his head. Before doing so, Mara nominated the Jets’ owner, Woody Johnson; the Patriots’ owner, Robert K. Kraft; and Patriots Coach Bill Belichick to do the same.