Hair donation question

[CountryMom2e]

I've been growing my hair out to donate, and after the holidays am going to cut it. I have enough for either Locks of Love or Beautiful Lengths. I had never heard of BL until Diane Lane was on the Today show cutting her hair for them. Apparently they are similar to LOL but distribute their wigs through the Amer Cancer Society for women with cancer.

I had heard some issues with LOL in the past - not fully disclosing their use of the hair, selling a lot of the hair, high salaries, etc. but am not sure if that's still an issue. Has anyone heard about Beautiful Lengths? They are sponsored by Pantene but beyond that I know little.

Suggestions, thoughts? Thanks!

[kiara7]

I'm looking to donate my hair too. I haven't really heard much about any of the organizations. I do not like LOL charging for wigs. BL is Pantene and ACS together, so it seems their operations would be more transparent.

Anyone have any other thoughts?

[kaleidoscopeeyes]

I'm curious too...I've got about 14" I'm so ready to lose.

[Devaskyla]

I donated mine through Pantene ( I guess that's Beautiful Lengths). I haven't really heard anything about them, though, it was just one of the few places I could find for Canada that wasn't a salon.

[jspring0308]

There's also Wigs for Kids http://www.wigsforkids.org/ and the wigs are donated to the families (kids) in need

[samstress]

:

good to know. i hope to do this one day.

[Smokering]

Locks of Love used to be considered to have dodgy business practices; it's hard to find solid info about it these days, but I'd tend to stay away from that company myself. Try to make sure the company's actually going to use your hair in the wigs, otherwise you might as well just keep it and make a donation, or sell your hair (if it's good-quality) to a dollmaker and give the money directly to cancer. One of the alleged issues with LOL is that they took even unusable-quality hair. Given that a lot of schoolgirls and so on were pressured into cutting off their hair, it's a bit rotten to take hair which can't be made into wigs. (Hennaed hair, for instance, they won't take, or some kinds of dyed hair, I think, or grey hair, or very damaged split-endy hair).

[lacysmommy]

Keep in mind that charities like LOL get very few money donations, and it costs lots of money to make nice wigs, keep people on staff, other overhead costs, etc, so they do have to sell wigs in order to make and donate wigs.