New Beard-A-Thon Website Ties Charities to NHL Playoff Beards

If you've started to watch the NHL playoffs you may have seen or heard advertisements for the Beard-A-Thon with the slogan of "Grow One for the Team". Located at www.beardathon.com, the Beard-A-Thon is a promotional effort trying together the NHL ritual playoff beard with charity.

The way it works is that you can signup and create an account to showcase your playoff beard. Upload your best beard picture and people can rate your beard picture on a scale of 1-5. Don't worry if you can't grow your own beard, because you can use some nifty art skills to tack on a beard to your picture.

People can then donate in support of you and your team. You can also donate to individuals, or to your team of choice as a whole. The donations go to designated charities. A suggested donation of $50 is noted as costing less than a dollar for every day of the playoffs.

While there is an overall "hockey fans" section of the site for those who don't have teams in the playoffs or for those whose teams aren't setup, many of the teams in the playoffs have set up their own individual charities to receive benefits as a result of the donations.

For example, the New York Rangers have tied the Beard-A-Thon to their Garden of Dreams foundation which works to improve the lives of children in crisis in the community. Other teams are tied to their own community organizations and nonprofit foundations.

If you pledge to someone in the hockey fans category or to the cause in general, you can pledge to both the Aurora Ice Association and the Cure NF foundation. It doesn't really matter who you donate to. It's not about your team winning after all, it's about feeling the spirit and getting in on a good cause. If you can have a good time and support your team in the process, well, all the better, but this moves beyond fan allegiances.

With the playoffs having just started, this promises to raise a lot of money for some worthy charities. Already several individual fundraisers have raised over $3,000.

To get in on the Beard-A-Thon, learn more about what they are doing or take a look at some homegrown playoff beards, visit www.beardathon.com.