Movember, an Australian nonprofit that raises money and awareness for men's cancers via mass mustache growth each November, comes from fairly fortuitous beginnings. In its first year, founders just sprouted their whiskers for fun, before realizing the conversations started by ironic facial hair could have a positive effect.
"It just came to us over some beers on a Sunday night in Melbourne," said Movember co-founder Adam Garone. "The original idea was just to bring them back for a joke, and 30 of our friends participated for no particular reason that November. Every guy had a lot of fun, but all of us had gotten grief from bosses and girlfriends over the month."
That was 2003. Garone and his friends had enough fun with their month of mustaches to try it again the next year, but to placate their friends and colleagues, they decided to make it a fund-raising effort.
"There are so many initiatives for women's cancers, but men have been apathetic about getting awareness, even though one in six men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer," Garone said. "If you just show up with a mustache one day, people ask you why you're growing it. So, for us, every mustache is another conversation about cancer."
Though dialogue is the cornerstone of the Movember campaign, it's also about getting pledges. Participants start the month of November clean shaven, and as their mustaches grow, they start more conversations and solicit more donations.
They're also soliciting more participants. Global participation in the campaign, which is now in Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, Canada, Ireland, and the United States, reached 173,435 last year. In the U.S., 7,000 participants raised $1 million last year, and early projections have this year's domestic mustache tally at somewhere around 25,000. (In Australia, a country of only 22 million, the number has already reached 125,000.) All of the money raised goes directly to men's cancer research and outreach organizations like the Lance Armstrong Foundation.
At the end of the month, Movember will host participants at gala events in 10 U.S. cities, but instead of furthering the fund-raising, they'll use the events to thank everyone for their contributions. "We have prizes from sponsors, award the best mustache, the best female recruiters, and 'the Lame Mo,' which we give as encouragement to the guy who had the hardest time growing one."
The Movember staff knows that most participants won't be able to make it to one of the 10 official parties, so they recently created a free kit for people to host their own Movember event. Each package comes with a party guide, posters, badges, a "Man of Movember" sash, and a Wahl mustache trimmer for the highest fund-raiser.
