Our weekly round-up of outlandish and interesting information collected from the corners of the charity sector.

It's just soaking in

Okay, so the ice bucket challenge is suddenly everywhere.
For those handful of you not in the know – and this included Diary about a week ago – it involves emptying a bucket of cold water over your head and then giving some money to charity. Utterly baffling, but there you go.

Perhaps it’s helped by the fact that loads of people with very low body fat percentages have used it as an excuse for videoing themselves while wearing tiny outfits. At the time of writing, the best-read story on the Metro news website is Victoria Beckham dunking a bucket of ice water over her head. So people obviously like this kind of thing.

We considered including pictures of many different people taking the challenge, but settled for George Bush being soaked. Because who doesn't like to see that sort of thing.

Anyway, from obscure beginnings, much like the #nomakeupselfie, this craze appears to be sweeping the nation. It looks like a few of these things are going to sweep through the sector. Big charities, your best fundraising tactic is now to just sit around and hope someone famous does something stupid, mentions your charity, and challenges everyone else to do the same.

But it's caused a few ripples

Of course, just because a stupid craze was intended to raise cash for you doesn’t mean it will. In the US, the ice bucket challenge has been associated with the ALS Association and has raised more than $40m.

But here ALS is known as motor neurone disease, and so as it crossed the pond the craze was hijacked (allegedly) by Macmillan Cancer Support. Suddenly, a bit of a fight has broken out between them and supporters of the MND Association. Macmillan has moved quickly to dismiss the idea that it nicked the scheme. To pour cold water on it, in fact.

Mind you, it appears the campaign was originally intended to raise cash for the Palm Beach Hospice in Florida. They must be a bit peeved.

In time, I dare say, the charities involved will settle their differences, and it will all be water under the bridge.

Then, of course, there’s been a whole bunch of sententious naysaying from commentators with relatively little to do: the ice bucket challenge has overshadowed the seriousness of the disease; it’s distracting from the message of charity; it makes light of a serious issue. People who do it are “slacktivists” who don’t understand the gravitas and suffering that ought to come with charity work.

Diary would presume that within the charities involved, people are reading all this pontificating in bafflement. Perhaps they’ve privately reached for the words of Bob Geldof: “Just give us your f***ing money”.

Sorry. And also, sorry we said sorry.

So you’re a newspaper, and you carry a full-page advert asking people to donate to charity to help victims of the humanitarian disaster unfolding in Gaza. What could go wrong? How could your readers complain?

What’s that? You’re the Jewish Chronicle?

Readers of the paper took to Twitter to say they couldn’t believe the nerve of the paper for carrying an advert asking people to donate to help folk who’ve been blown up, made homeless and left starving as a result of the attack on Gaza.

The Chronicle’s now apologised to its readers. But unsurprisingly, that hasn’t gone down too well in some quarters either. Now people are demanding an apology for the apology.

Diary’s concern in all this is what the Chronicle is going to do with the money it was paid to run the article. Surely it shouldn’t be allowed to keep the profit from such an ill-thought out series of actions?

Maybe it should give the money to charity.

That’s got to be a very fine tasting pig

Finally, in other bizarre behaviour across the pond, three American companies have just paid a combined $2m for a ham.

It’s a grand champion ham, apparently, weighing in at 13.3 lbs. They bought it at a charity auction, following an evening shindig, which suggests maybe a chief exec had had one too many glasses of bubbly when the bidding started.

Diary is struggling to seek how the ham in question looks different from any other piece of pork. But there must be something about it, because a quick check on American food prices shows the normal price of ham is about $1.50 per lb. So this is a 10,000,000 per cent mark-up.

Anyway, what’s bad news for Republic Bank, Hermitage Farm and Bridgeman’s Food is good news for charities in Louisville, Kentucky, who get the profits.