A Few Brothers Stopped Shaving. Last Year They Raised $187,980.
In 2014, Michael Dellon, Pi ’17, and a handful of brothers at our Pi Chapter at Syracuse created a Movember team, stopped shaving for a month and raised money. They called the team Boys Things. The first year brought in a couple thousand dollars. Last November it raised $187,980 — one of the most successful Movember teams in the world, and Brother Dellon and other members of the Pi Chapter still captain it.
In 2025, five Psi Upsilon chapters — Pi (Syracuse), Beta Beta (Trinity), Tau (Penn), Omicron (Illinois), and Alpha Omicron (NJIT)— carried the Fraternity to 4th place overall in Movember’s national Fraternity Challenge, a competition among fraternities across the country. Five chapters got us to fourth. This year we want all of them.
If you have never taken part, here is the whole idea. Movember is a global men’s health charity — in the U.S. a registered 501(c)(3) — that has funded more than 1,320 men’s health projects since 2003 in three areas: mental health and suicide prevention, prostate cancer, and testicular cancer. “Mo” is short for mustache, and the idea is simple: you start November 1 clean-shaven, grow one for the thirty days, and let it do the talking. A bad mustache invites questions, and the questions are the point.
Taking part is free and takes about ten minutes. You register at movember.com or in the Movember app, which gives you a personal fundraising page, and then you ask people to back you — donations go straight to Movember through that page, so no one is passing a jar around or handling cash. If growing a mustache is not for you, Movember offers three other ways in that count exactly the same: walk or run 60 miles across the month, host an event, or set a personal challenge and collect pledges for it.
Why it matters is the important part. The need is not distant from a chapter house. About 60 men are lost to suicide every hour worldwide. Suicide is the second leading cause of death for Americans aged 15 to 34. Testicular cancer is the most common cancer in men aged 15 to 39 — and highly survivable when caught early.
The research behind Psi U Cares, our Fraternity’s mental health initiative, found that fraternity members are twice as likely to turn to a brother as to anyone else when they are struggling. A chapter house is often the first place a brother says out loud that they are not okay.
Which is why the money is only half of this. The dollars fund research somewhere else; the conversations happen right here. A brother who checks himself, a father who finally schedules a screening, a friend who gets asked twice how they are really doing — that never shows up on a leaderboard, and it may be the most valuable thing a chapter does all year. The ridiculous mustache is what gets someone to ask the question. You take it from there.
And it is not only for the men who can grow one. Movember has always been Mo Bros and Mo Sisters — the miles, the events, and the personal challenges count exactly the same, and our sisters, partners, and sorority chapters are welcome in all of it. Nobody is required to grow anything. The ask is participation.
Join us
Signing up is free and takes about ten minutes. Undergraduates, alumni, and anyone who wants in can register at movember.com, join a Psi U team — or take part on their own — and then join the Psi Upsilon Fraternity Network, which is what puts our totals together and enters us in the Fraternity Challenge.
Step-by-step instructions, fundraising ideas, mental health resources, the leaderboard, and a downloadable Movember Chapter Guide for chapter officers are all on our Movember page.
Questions, or a story you would like us to tell? Contact Justin Sines, Chapter Services Coordinator, at justin@psiu.org.
November 1. Put down the razor — or lace up the shoes.
A Few Brothers Stopped Shaving. Last Year They Raised $187,980. Read More »
