Locks of Love

I have donated hair four times in my life, and all four times my ponytails were sent to Locks of Love.

Over a period of six years, I underwent a cycle of growing my hair out and cutting it short, growing it out, cutting it short. In fact, the biggest thing holding me back from getting dreadlocks when I was 19 was the fact that it would halt my giving.

And now that my dreads are gone and my hair is growing out again, I have every intention of going back to my cycle of growing and cutting.

Except this time, I won't be giving to Locks of Love.

Many people are aware of the sketchiness of Locks of Love. But not enough. A lot of my friends donate their hair, and half of them say, "No, I would never donate to Locks of Love. I know better than that," while the other half are still saying, "Yeah, I gave to Locks of Love, why?"

I don't need to copy and paste statistics for you. The data is already out there:
http://newsfeed.time.com/2013/05/17/report-locks-of-love-lost-6-6-million-worth-of-donated-hair/
http://badhairday.typepad.com/bad_hair_day/2006/07/locks_of_love_i.html
http://www.lovelyish.com/2013/05/17/locks-of-love-tangled-in-scandal/

However, just to sum up:
Locks of Love sells many of their hair donations.
They allegedly do not keep track of donations.
Although much hair they receive is unusable, there are still way too many hair donations unaccounted for.
They do not give charitably to children who need wigs, but rather sell wigs to children with diseases such as alopecia areata. They also may or may not sell donated hair to other organizations for a profit.
In other words, their intake of hair and monetary donations is high, but their output of wigs to needy children is low.

I don't know how much of this is true. In fact, Locks of Love says on their website, "In no way is Locks of Love associated with or an affiliate of any for-profit hair replacement business." They also began listing documents of their finances on their website.

But I still don't trust Locks of Love. Although I learned of this "scandal" not long after my last hair donation, I have seen many women give to them since. The news isn't getting out there fast enough, so I just wanted people to hear it from me.

Remember that hair donation is good, and there are several great, trustworthy organizations out there, such as Pantene Beautiful Lengths and Wigs for Kids (among others) that will accept hair donations and that we know will responsibly do with them what they promise.

For funsies, before and after donation pictures at age 16:

God bless.