Slightly unusual request.

[campion7.livejournal.com]

Hello all--

I'm doing a bit of research and I need to know something.

Are there any places in the Boston area where you can donate hair for wigs for either cancer victims or alopecia (sp?) victims?

Comments

[veek.livejournal.com]

There are hair salons in the area that will pass on your donation to Locks of Love (http://www.locksoflove.org/) – don't know whether you're looking to donate to an organization that deals with cancer etc. more specifically, but between the above-referenced site and calling up hair-cutting places to ask them about donating, this is the best I can do. :)

[douxquemiel.livejournal.com]

I actually donated twelve inches of hair recently to Locks of Love (http://www.locksoflove.org/). They no longer have specific stylists or salons they are affiliated with, but you can get your hair cut anywhere as long as you follow their guidelines (check their website for more details). I just went to my preferred salon, said I was doing Locks of Love, and it went fine. Just make sure you have over ten inches (if your hair is curly or even wavy, straighten it with a flat iron to make sure), put it in a ponytail holder, and then chop chop!! Stick the tail in a plastic bag, follow the mailing instructions, and voila, you've donated.

It was really easy and very rewarding for me, and I'm very glad I did it.

Re: Locks of Love: possibly a scam

[mattdm.livejournal.com]

I just did a little bit of said research. The "six-figure sums" claim is a bit exaggerated (http://charityreports.bbb.org/Public/Report.aspx?CharityID=1839). Plus, they really are a non-profit, so it makes sense to resell hair they can't use -- the money made still goes into the mission of the organization. Their administrative overhead seems relatively high when you look at it in terms of percentage (11%), but that's because this seems to be a pretty small charity overall -- the flat administrative expenses wouldn't pay a decent salary to two full-time employees.

Plus, a lot of people seem upset because they're looking for the I'm-Helping-Kids-With-Cancer angle, while Locks of Love is actually focused on children with permanent hair loss. This isn't because they Hate Kids With Cancer OMG but because they're really just not that big of an organization and have to decide where to focus.

Another complaint is that they don't necessarily provide the wigs for free but rather on a sliding scale based on need. Given, again, the size of the organization and the cost of a single natural-hair wig, that doesn't sound unreasonable to me.

In short, they don't appear to be a scam to me.

Re: Locks of Love: possibly a scam

[lidiya6.livejournal.com]

Locks of Love gets 4 stars (top rating) on the independant charity rating site http://www.charitynavigator.org

Thanks for the five year old data

[komos.livejournal.com]

According to the current report (http://charityreports.bbb.org/public/Report.aspx?CharityID=1839), Locks of Love does meet the BBB's 20 standards for charity accountability.

Re: Why the sarcasm?

[komos.livejournal.com]

Yes, it was terrible of me to point out that you were using old data, and that the standards you have chosen as a measure for appropriate non-profit behavior currently support the organization. Apologies.

"From what I've read" is really unreliable measure. You may as well note that childhood vaccinations cause autism (http://www.know-vaccines.org/autism.html), and that soy causes the gay (http://worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=53327). Most legitimate research appears to contradict these findings, but I suppose you can never be too careful.

Re: Last reply to you

[komos.livejournal.com]

As has been noted, the report you cite makes no mention of "closed books." Instead, we are informed that, "In response to the Alliances request for a copy of LoLs financial statements, LoL submitted a copy of its Independent Accountants Compilation Report for the fiscal year ended November 30, 2002."

It was noted that they were unable to produce an audited report, and that the BBB did not receive a complete record of their finances. Neither is indicative of closed books. Rather, they suggest that the materials that were sent did not sync with the BBB accounting model. It looks like a bureaucratic issue, and I would be unsurprised to learn that the organization failed to meet the accounting standards for organizations with a budget over $250K because they hadn't anticipated cresting that amount that year. And in spite of this issue, they still managed to meet 13 of the 14 requirements imposed by the BBB, and now have met all 20 of the current requirements.

Also noted elsewhere, the primary grousing around LoL stems from people who had assumed they were giving their hair to an organization that helped cancer patients and then felt they had been defrauded. Ultimately, they failed to do their research and as a result, got their mad on. This is not unlike the complaints about the American Red Cross by people who had given money and blood to that organization after 9/11 and were surprised to learn that the resources had not universally been given to 9/11 victims. It's all so much sour grapes.

...and I'm sorry, but selling hair that does not meet minimal standards for their hairpieces is good management of resources.

Perhaps I don't understand your standards. I do understand, however, that current evaluations of the charity do not support your contentions, which appear to be based, at best, on a misreading of a five year old report, and at worst, largely on anecdote.

Re: tl;dr

[komos.livejournal.com]

The "didn't read" part is clear. It's a hallmark of your entire interaction about this organization.

Shame you didn't decide that it wasn't worth your time before spamming three communities with bad research.

[komos.livejournal.com]

It's bad research to begin with a bunch of sour grapes anecdotes from an lj comm and then attempt to argue against a demonstrably favorable rating by citing (and poorly at that) a five year old report by an organization that has since rubber stamped the charity.

Sarcasm entered the conversation only once it was clear that you were content to rest on exaggeration and conjecture to support your initial contention in spite of any evidence that refuted it.

Re: Information from the then-president of Charity Navigator

[komos.livejournal.com]

Let's look at these critically, ok?

You have presented four blog articles centered around a NYT article about the charity, which is primarily examining the fate of hair donated to LoL. This article states:
As much as 80 percent of the hair donated [...] is unusable for its wigs, the group says. Many people are unaware of the hair donation guidelines and send in hair that is gray, wet or moldy, too short, or too processed, some of which is immediately thrown away.

Trent stamp writes of the article:
80% of the hair that is donated to the popular charity, Locks of Love, is "immediately thrown out" due to it being unusable for wig making. And the majority of what actually makes the cut (sorry) does "not go to the gravely ill, but is sold to help pay for charities’ organizational costs.”

I trust you can see the difference? Stamp, who elsewhere notes, "I think they're a good group (http://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=search.summary&orgid=9285) and brilliant marketers" (citing the 4 of 4 star rating given by his own organization), here plays fast and loose with the facts he uses to question the program. There's a clear difference between noting that the majority of the mountains of hair received by the charity do not make it into wigs and misquoting the cited article to make it appear that that the vast majority of donated hair is being "thrown away" as opposed to being sold to support the program and fund related research.

Just so we're clear, the hair donations are a marketing gimmick that are calculated to raise awareness of the charity and otherwise leave a warm fuzzy feeling for those people who lack the means or inclination to make a financial contribution. I get that. The charity uses as much as it can for its hairpieces, sells as much of the rest as is possible, and tosses rotting, damaged, or otherwise unusable hair. This is is exactly the same model used by the other charities that do this kind of work (again from the NYT article):

In fact, all three of the children’s charities sell excess hair — in particular, the short and the gray — to commercial wig makers to defray costs.

Where does the money go? The article again:

According to its tax returns, Locks of Love made $1.9 million from hair sales from 2001 to 2006, and took in another $3.4 million in donations. Besides paying for wigs, the money goes for overhead and other costs, including grants for alopecia research.

$1.9 million in hair sales? Does that number suggest to you that 80% of the roughly 36,400 donations they receive annually is thrown away? That's approximately $52 (full disclosure: I ran numbers for a single year in the earlier edit) for each remaining ponytail, and that assumes they're not making ANY hairpieces.

What this string of blog articles pushes is a non-issue in terms of the financial viability and transparency of the organization. Granted, the LoL director overreacted in attributing the statements made by Stamp to the NYT, but there's nothing here to suggest that the charity is not operating entirely above board. Again, Stamp himself acknowledges that they are a good organization. We're back to discussing the allegation that donated hair is unlikely to find it's way onto a child's head, but keep in mind that a) the organization is not attempting to hide this in any way, and b) the fate of the donated hair is no different the other two major charities that do this work.

So sure, spread awareness that financial contribution is probably preferable to shearing your lovely mane, but the claim that the charity is a "scam" is entirely unsupported.

Re: 2003: Locks of Love failed BBB accountability standards

[mattdm.livejournal.com]

That link doesn't say they refused to disclose them, which implies maliciousness. It just says BBB requested and didn't get everything they asked. That's suspicious and definitely raises red flags, but looks like as for the most recent information they've gotten their act together. And, even in the older report, they did meet the other 14 then-current standards.

In the interest of full digging, the three standards that the "Pantene Beautiful Lengths" parent organization doesn't currently meet are #3 (only has two board meetings a year instead of three; oh noes!), #16 (doesn't prepare an annual report), and #19 (sells stuff it says benefits the cause, doesn't disclose what percentage actually goes towards what they say it will).

Re: Other avenues

[mattdm.livejournal.com]

Not sure what a specific person who needs a wig is going to do with random bits of hair -- it takes lots of hair to make one wig.

And Locks of Love is precisely "a cancer or alopecia society", not a "wheeler-dealer". Again, a fully-accredited highly rated one. So that's a really weird thing to say.

Re: Other avenues

[komos.livejournal.com]

"I meant a donation of money."

Which is why I think it's curious that you are citing the NYT article that puts a slightly negative tilt on the hair donation aspect, and a blogger who misquoted the article to make the situation seem far more dire than it actually is AND concedes that LoL is a good organization.

[komos.livejournal.com]

May I point out that this is the fourth time you've suggested to me that you were leaving this off, and fifth overall?

[wellstar.livejournal.com]

I don't know about any in-person donation centers/recipients, but an alternative to Locks of Love is the Pantene Beautiful Lengths (http://www.beautifullengths.com/en_US/index_home.jsp) campaign.

[mattdm.livejournal.com]

Because, y'know, Proctor & Gamble is known to be a great not-for-profit charity organization.

I mean, it does look like they're doing a good thing with this program, but they seem pretty transparently doing it mostly for the advertising value -- "Pantene is a brand that knows the importance of healthy, beautiful hair", says one press release, which also goes on to tout their Guinness World Record™.

That doesn't mean they're inherently bad, and if you really care that your hair goes to a woman with cancer rather than a kid with permanent hair loss, well there you go. But they're also a lot less transparent with their actual practices -- who knows what they're doing with the unusable donated hair that Locks of Love takes so much heat for selling? And the Better Business Bureau (note this is the equivalent link to that in my comment a few posts back) rates the "Entertainment Industry Foundation" as not meeting standards for charity accountability (http://charityreports.bbb.org/public/Report.aspx?CharityID=2730). And hey, their CEO is paid a cool quarter mil.

So.......

[bombardiette.livejournal.com]

I suppose the idea of calling or contacting the one of the many cancer research hospitals in Boston or even the American Cancer Society themselves (local contact info culled from their website here (http://www.cancer.org/docroot/COM/COM_0.asp) ) was a bit too easy?

I bet they could tell you what's really up with Locks of Love or even suggest salons in the area that they've worked with! And the local page lets you know of local events coming up too.

Just sayin'...

[icecreamempress.livejournal.com]

Locks of Love does accept donations of hair, and does provide wigs on a sliding-scale basis to children who are suffering from alopecia and other skin disorders that inhibit their hair growth. They've also improved their financial disclosure, etc., and now meet the charity-review organizations' standards for transparency.

Now, the question of why they have historically spent so much time enlisting people to donated in honor of cancer patients, and why they spent so little time correcting the media misstatements of their mission as one to help children with cancer, is a whole other story. But let's hope that they continue with the transparency they've accomplished in the recent past.