Going Bald: St. Baldrick's Fundraising Success Story

When you think about childhood cancer, what images come to mind? What acts of selflessness or empowerment resonate? Chances are, head-shaving is one of them.

St. Baldrick’s Foundation, the “world’s largest volunteer organization for childhood cancer” has captured the power of head shaving, packaged it for communities, and unleashed its full potential to mobilize networks through peer-to-peer. What began as a challenge between a few colleagues in 2000 has exploded into a scalable social DIY fundraising program mobilizing nearly 58,000 “shavees” to raise a whopping $38,988,526 in 2014.

The gist of the program is simple. A shavee-to-be hops onto the website, finds a shaving event in their area (or creates one if none are nearby), signs-up, sets up their personal fundraising page and attends a community shave-a-thon on a specific date to have their head shaved.