Every October for nearly two decades, a crew of Long Beach guys has shaved clean, grown the most questionable mustaches of their lives, and asked everyone they know to pay for the privilege of watching. The running total just hit a number nobody dared say out loud in 2007: the Long Island chapter of Mustaches For Kids has now raised more than $1 million for the kids' cancer program at Memorial Sloan Kettering.

A joke that turned into a million dollars

The chapter started in 2007, when a group of Long Beach schoolteachers, James Bogdan, Billy Kupferman and Vinny Leis, joined up with city firefighter Justin Fitzmartin after cancer touched students in their own classrooms. The pitch was deliberately silly: grow a mustache for one month, let your friends and family mock it, and turn the mockery into donations. The silliness was the point. It gave people a reason to ask about a hard subject, and it made giving feel like a party instead of a pity.

Twenty seasons in, the mustaches are still bad and the math is now serious. More than $1 million has gone from Long Beach upper lips to MSK Kids, the Memorial Sloan Kettering program that treats more children with cancer than any other hospital in the country.

Where the money actually goes

The dollars are aimed at the part of childhood cancer that insurance never sees: the non-medical costs that pile up on a family the day of a diagnosis. The fund has covered hotel stays and flights so parents can be next to their kids during treatment, and it pays for the small normal things that a hospital floor tries hard to keep normal, birthday celebrations included. One recent season bought virtual reality headsets so kids tied to an IV pole could go somewhere else for an hour.

The kid from the poster runs it now

The founders carried the chapter for 17 years, and when they stepped back in 2024 the tradition could have quietly ended with them. Instead it went to Leo Stanger of Lido Beach, who is 26 and has been part of Mustaches For Kids since he appeared in its promotional materials at age 7. The group that once put him on the flyer now answers to him, which may be the most Long Beach succession plan ever written.

Volunteers keep finding their own ways to carry it further. One Hofstra student who has grown with the group for two seasons is running the Philadelphia Marathon in November to pull new eyes toward the cause.

This season is underway, and anyone can jump in

The 2026 season kicked off last Saturday with Shave Day at Bright Eye Beer Co. in Long Beach, where dozens of growers started from bare lips and the day brought in several thousand dollars on its own. The chapter's goal for the season is $20,000, which would beat the $15,000 it collected last year.

It all builds to the Stache Bash on Oct. 23, a Halloween-flavored costume party that doubles as the final push, complete with awards for the top fundraiser and the sweetest mustache of the year. Tickets run about the cost of two slices, and the room is historically full of people who met each other through this exact event.

What it means for you

You do not need a Long Beach address or the ability to grow a decent mustache. Growers of any skill level can join the season late, donations land directly through the chapter's page on Memorial Sloan Kettering's giving site, and the Stache Bash is open to anyone willing to show up in costume. The whole machine is volunteers, so the money goes where they say it goes.

A million dollars, one itchy upper lip at a time, from one beach town. The second million starts now.