Lather, Rinse, Donate

A STREAM of girls in green T-shirts bustled into the gym at Seton High School in Cincinnati last May, scrambled into folding chairs and bowed their heads. As more than 400 spectators counted down, volunteers pulled the girls’ locks taut into ponytails and, on cue, sheared off eight inches, creating blond, brunette and raven pompoms that many girls shook and twirled.

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Giving a Piece of Yourself (September 6, 2007)

CHOP CHOP A girl has her hair cut at an event at the Mall of America for Pantene Beautiful Lengths.

The newly shorn — more than 200 students, siblings and friends — had been preparing for this cut-a-thon for months, growing their hair for Pantene Beautiful Lengths, a charitable program that makes wigs for women facing cancer treatment. Jen Sherman, 16, a junior, participated because her mother and her aunt had died of cancer.

“I did it for them, as a way to remember them,” said Jen, whose sister, Megan, cut off her light-colored ponytail. “It felt really special.”

Forget collecting pennies for Unicef or washing cars to raise money for hospitals. One of the most popular ways young people are contributing to charity these days — everyone from Girl Scouts to bar mitzvah boys — is growing their hair long and donating it for wigs for children and women with serious diseases.

It’s not just teenagers. Biker clubs have organized cut-a-thons. Professional athletes have held public shearings. The NBC news anchor Ann Curry lopped off the actress Diane Lane’s mane on the “Today” show last year.

But although charities have been highly effective at stirring the passions of donors, they have been less successful at finding a use for the mountains of hair sent to them as a result. As much as 80 percent of the hair donated to Locks of Love, the best known of the charities, 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. Even hair that survives the winnowing may not go to the gravely ill, but may be sold to help pay for charities’ organizational costs.

At the headquarters of Locks of Love in Lake Worth, Fla., the hair deluge — up to 2,000 individual donations a week — can be daunting for the small staff of six employees and 10 to 15 volunteers.

“We created this monster because people get so much from it,” said Madonna Coffman, the president of Locks of Love. “They get the attention. They get a warm and fuzzy feeling. They feel they’re going to help a child.”

Locks of Love sends the best of the hair it receives to a wig manufacturer, Taylormade Hair Replacement in Millbrae, Calif., which weeds through the selection still further, rejecting up to half.

“We hate throwing it away but ultimately we have to clear the place out,” said Greg Taylor, the president and owner of Taylormade. “There is a disparity between the hundreds and hundreds of braids and ponytails and the number of hairpieces we’ve produced.”

Mr. Taylor sells the wigs wholesale to Locks of Love for less than $1,000. Since the charity began in December 1997, it has provided about 2,000 wigs to recipients for free or a reduced price. The group makes clear in its literature and on its Web site that most of the wig recipients are not children with cancer. Rather, they are children who suffer from alopecia areata, an autoimmune disorder that destroys follicles and results in hair loss. About 2 percent of the population, including half a million children, are estimated to have alopecia.

But many alopecia sufferers seem unaware that they are the group’s main priority; only about 10 apply for a wig each week, Ms. Coffman said. Many donors, too, seem ignorant or only partly aware of the group’s focus. Maggie Varney, a hairdresser and owner of a salon in St. Clair Shores, Mich., said she was shocked to learn that hair she collected from her clients and sent to Locks of Love was not used for wigs for children with cancer. In reaction, she formed her own nonprofit, Wigs 4 Kids, in 2003, which receives a few dozen donations of hair a month that are made into wigs that go predominantly to children with cancer.

Two other groups also serve people with cancer. Pantene Beautiful Lengths, started in June last year, has the resources of Pantene, the $3 billion global hair product division of Procter & Gamble, including teams of publicists who stage cutting fests. Already the program has received 18,000 ponytails — 8,000 more than originally projected — and distributed 2,000 wigs to women with cancer, said Seth Klugherz, the North American Pantene brand manager.

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