After a six year evaluation, a task force at Houston’s Falco Financial has conditionally recommended that CEO Marianne Willikin participate in the “Ice Bucket Challenge,” in which participants dump buckets of ice water over their heads to raise funding to combat Lou Gehrig’s disease.
“We admire the intent and consider it an extremely worthy cause,” the task force wrote. “So we have concluded that participation by the CEO is in alignment with the core mission of Falco.” The official recommendation is expected following a final review, which is expected to take five months.
The challenge was issued on August 22, 2014 by Janice McSpillane, an accounts payable clerk, via a video on YouTube. Within 20 minutes of its posting, all vice presidents and HR Director, Sylvia Talmadge were meeting in Willikin’s office to discuss a response. Talmadge, along with six representatives from finance and operations, were asked to convene a task force to look into the matter.
“Over a period of 36 months we surveyed 2300 companies whose CEOs had participated in the challenge,” says Talmadge. “We wanted to look at how it impacted the bottom line, employee retention and other factors.”
The task force also reviewed over 150 options pertaining to where the dumping of ice should take place, what the CEO should wear, what type of bucket would be most effective, etc. Ms. McSpillane was interviewed on 12 different occasions to ensure there weren’t any ulterior motives to her issuing the challenge.
After another three years spent compiling the data – involving 88 employees off an on, and over 10,000 hours – the task force issued its recommendation. Pending a positive review process, the actual dumping has been tentatively scheduled for September 7.
“If concerns come up during the review,” says Talmadge, “we will reschedule for sometime in 2022.”
