The Ice Bucket Challenge was one of the biggest health stories of 2014, with more than 17 million people joining in to support research for ALS and other causes. In all, an estimated 2.5 million people donated $115 million to the ALS Association.

But where did all that money go?

CNN reports that the ALS Association says about 40 percent of the ice bucket funds ($47.1 million) has been spent or budgeted toward specific purposes, and the plan is to put all of the remaining money into five key areas.

Of the total money raised, 67 percent goes in the bucket marked "research" to find a treatment or cure for ALS. The ALS Association is spreading $77 million to many different research projects.

For example, $10.5 million is going to a group that's testing whether a medication used to stabilize heart rhythms in cardiac patients can also stabilize nerve cells in ALS patients.

Another initiative: $5 million is going to the Neurocollaborative, which is creating stem cell lines from ALS patients that will mimic their own nerve cells.

The ALS Association is also budgeting $1 million to Project MinE and $2.5 million to the New York Genome Center to map the genetic code of ALS patients.

The ALS Association is budgeting millions for its 39 local ALS chapters to help patients, additional fund-raising efforts, and a variety of initiatives to educate the public about ALS and help doctors and researchers learn more about how best to fight for ALS patients

"There are all kinds of sort of bizarre traditions in societies, and this strikes me as, potentially, a more useful one than many others if it can raise that kind of money," he said.

His only worry: that donors will pay attention only to diseases with the cleverest social media marketing campaigns.

"Obviously there are a lot of other diseases that devastate peoples' lives," he said. "My hope would be that they get the resources they need for research as well."