Do you believe in Christmas miracles? A creative agency from UK called Grey London definitely does. Their remarkable story tells how a seemingly crazy idea can literally save human lives, proving that funny festive trinkets can have much more power and meaning to them than it might seem from the first glance.
Of Beards and Christmas...
If you have ever dreamt of having a Christmas tree right on your face, you will be happy to know that it is no longer a problem with Beard Baubles, a charity project initiated by Grey London and inspired by the magical spirit of Christmas and desire to raise awareness to the deadly illness known as malignant melanoma - the skin cancer.
It all started as a mere experiment in December 2014, when Grey London and Beard Season, a charity organization from Australia, cooperatively launched an extraordinary product called Beard Baubles - a set of festive Christmas ornaments attached to the facial hair. The accessory became a true hit among the men who prefer to have a considerable amount of growth on their faces. In fact, the Beard Baubles became so popular that they were completely sold out in a very short period of time.
The photos of bearded men with Christmas baubles soon flooded the internet and gave the trend an extra spin! Now Beard Baubles are among the most fashionable and fancy Christmas accessories for men and… well, hairy dogs, as reported by Ollie Dearn, who works at the Grey London agency - as it turned out, the trend enthralled not only humans but their pets too.
Can beards really save people?
But how do Beard Baubles save lives, you would ask. All the money from the sales of the baubles is donated to the skin cancer research. The creators of Beard Baubles believe that malignant melanoma will be combated sooner if more awareness is raised concerning this problem. Needless to say, donations are very important for fighting skin cancer, but the most important is letting more people in the world know how dangerous the disease is. That’s exactly what Beard Baubles do.
The founder of Beard Season, Scott Maggs, makes the point: “The real goal of the #BeardBaubles isn’t raising funds, it’s inspiring action, and every day now, hundreds of people are signing up as Beard Season Ambassadors on our website, following us on social media, booking skin checks, and spreading the word”.
Impressed? Taking the next step is easy
Ning is always inspired by the stories like that. We know our network creators are compassionate and charitable people, who would be happy to contribute to the right cause - that’s the reason why there are so many altruistically oriented websites on Ning.
To facilitate network creators in helping others, Ning has introduced a new Donations feature that allows users to raise funds for the purposes they consider important.
You can now set up a “Donate” button on any page of your Ning network, provide a description of your fundraiser, explain its importance, and express gratitude to those who agree to donate. You can easily check the results of your charity campaign by monitoring the transaction statistics.
So now you can come up with the idea as crazy and ambitious as the Beard Baubles in order to collect money for charity, organizations researching terminal illnesses or helping the children who lost their parents, etc.
Make the world a better place together with Ning!
Comments
Yes, in order to make the donation person should have the account on the network, at least it's working so at the moment.
Best wishes,
Ning Team.