Locks of Love, Be Transparent About $6M Of Hair Donations Unaccounted For Yearly

My 11-year-old daughter just cut her beautiful hair, intending to donate it to charity Locks of Love. Cutting 10 inches of hair is a HUGE deal for a pre-teen in middle school, but she agreed to do it to help kids in need. However, after reading a recent report that reveals $6 million worth of hair donations to Locks of Love goes unaccounted for each year, we've decided to donate my daughter's hair elsewhere.

Please sign the petition to ask Locks of Love to be transparent about the $6 million worth of hair donations unaccounted for.

The firm Nonprofit Investor crunched the numbers and found Locks of Love receives about 104,000 hair donations per year. The charity says 80% of this hair is unusable, and it takes 6 to 10 hair donations to make one wig. That means the charity should produce 2,080 hairpieces per year (104,000 donations * 20% usable donations / 10 donations per wig). But the charity produced a meager 317 hairpieces in 2011.

That means just 3% of the 104,000 donations made it into a hairpiece. And those 1,763 wigs unaccounted for? They're worth a whopping $6.6 million.

When asked for more information, like how many hair donations are sold each year, Locks of Love said it does not keep those numbers on record.

People donate to Locks of Love because they want to make a difference. Cutting your hair is no small task, and we want to ensure our donations are accounted for and go to children who need them the most. Please sign the petition to urge Locks of Love to be transparent: publicly disclose the amount of hair donations received yearly, how many are used to make wigs, how many are discarded, and how many are sold.