On June 4 at its annual Stache Bash, Mustaches for Kids (M4K; www.m4komaha.com) Omaha announced a 30-day grand total of $1,004,683 raised for local Omaha children’s charities, the most money of any Mustaches for Kids chapter in the nation for the 11th straight year. This brings M4K Omaha’s total raised to $5,758,338 over its 14-year history. This year, the funds raised by M4K Omaha’s 240 growers went to support Kids Can Community Center and Child Saving Institute, while also gifting $100,000 to its “bonus charities,” Foster Love, Nebraska Red Dawgs, and Imagine Inclusion.
Each May, M4K Omaha assembles a group of fun-loving men who want to help kids and look good doing it. The rules are simple: grow nothing but a mustache for 30 days and do whatever you can to collect donations for the chosen charity partners. Growers who raise at least $1,000 are inducted into the highly exclusive Selleck Society. Growers meet for weekly checkpoints, compete in the Mustache Melee, and host their own events or perform their own stunts to raise money.
At Kids Can Community Center (www.KidsCan.org), their mission is to educate, engage, and inspire children through early childhood education and out of school experiences. The organization has evolved over the past century to meet the continually changing needs of children and families in the community.
Child Saving Institute (CSI; www.childsaving.org) is a human services organization serving children and families in the Omaha-metro area. Their focus is on the prevention, intervention, and healing of childhood neglect, abuse, and trauma.