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Locks of Love is a non-profit charity based in the United States. The organization accepts donations of human hair and money, with the stated intention of making wigs for needy children who have lost their hair due to a medical condition.
Requirements for recipients
To be eligible to receive a hairpiece, a child must:
- Be under 18 years of age.
- Have long-term hair loss from alopecia areata (an autoimmune disease), scalp burns, or a similar medical condition. Children whose hair loss is due to chemotherapy may be excluded from consideration, as their condition is considered temporary.
- Provide proof of financial need.
- Submit two letters of recommendation, a photo, and an essay.
Locks of Love does not provide all hairpieces free of charge. According to its website, prices for human-hair wigs are set on a sliding scale based on the recipient's family income.
Criticisms
Locks of Love has received criticism for its practice of selling donated hair, rather than using it in wigs as the donors expect. In general, hair contributed by Americans is unsuitable for wig manufacture. The reason is that their hair is damaged by frequent washing, the use of styling products and dyes, and the heat from hair dryers and irons.
- Guidestar noted in a 2005 report that Locks of Love receives over 104,000 donations of hair each year, but has created a total of 1000 hairpieces since 1997. In response, Locks of Love asserts that six to ten hair donations are required for each wig.
At ten donations per wig, 1000 wigs would require only 10,000 donations. That still leaves over 90,000 donations unaccounted for.
Locks of Love representatives are frequent guests on The Oprah Winfrey Show and other daytime television shows, where they provide haircuts to guests and audience members. The representatives and show hosts suggest that the hair collected during the show will go into a wig, and that the wigs are given to children with cancer; neither of these outcomes are guaranteed.
Accountability standards
The Better Business Bureau’s Wise Giving Alliance report, valid through April 2007, states that at the time the report was published Locks of Love did meet all twenty of its "Standards for Charity Accountability."
According to the latest report available on the Charity Navigator site (Fiscal Year Ended 11/04), Locks of Love scored an overall rating of 68.11 out of 70 (“four stars”).
These organizations seem to evaluate only the finances of charities. They do not have any comments on whether donated hair is used as donors expect, for wigs. They also don't evaluate sources of income in detail, so it is not possible to tell how much of Locks of Love's income is from the sale of donated hair.
The Better Business Bureau reports that Locks of Love made $352,401 from "unusable material sales." It is possible that some or all of this is the sale of the unaccounted for donated hair.
External links
Reports by charity-monitoring groups
"Locks of Love"