Anybody here ever donate a car, boat or whatever to one of those car donation programs? Or have you worked for one, or have experience with the charity that recieved the proceeds?
I help run an animal rescue charity and a volunteer is suggesting that we sign up to work with one of these car donation programs. The rules don’t sound bad, but there’s no indication of how much money we could get from it. Also, my personal experience is that people are more likely to trade in an old car for a new one, rather than donating a car for the tax write-off. Anybody here know otherwise? I just want to make sure that if we participate in this, it will be worth the trouble.
I’ve donated a car to one, and my brother-in-law donated his car to one. In both cases, the cars were totalled, and the donation program almost certainly sold the car for parts. I figured it wasn’t worth my time to find out which junk yard would buy it off of me, given that I’d probably profit less than a hundred bucks, and possibly not enough to pay for the tow truck.
I’ve never known anyone who donated a car in good condition to such a program.
Cool. Was it quick and easy to hand off your cars to them? Any problems?
I know there are many companies out there that do this, and the one you worked with might not be the one I’m looking at. But I know nothing at this point, so am looking for a general sense of how these work. Also to see if it’s worth having mention of it on our website - marketing: will it make us look bad if these things have a bad reputation - that kind of thing.
I donated my 1976 Chevy plow truck to a private school to be used on their property. Still a good truck, but, well, nearly 40 years old and could not keep up for what I needed.
They where very grateful. I claimed $500 in donations on my taxes.
I should note that the truck was worth more than that, and it was hard to part with ‘Puddles’ the truck. I couldn’t imagine trying to sell her, would have broke my heart. Donating was the way to go. Good deal all around.
Totally easy. I had to meet a tow truck and hand over my title, IIRC (this was in 1998, so I might be skipping a detail, but that’s basically what it was).
I’ve donated a few cars, all to the same program. There are different sorts of car donation programs, but as an animal rescue, your organization is only going to be interested in the type* where the cars are sold and the proceeds go to the charity. One thing I would look at is how the vendor’s fee is calculated. There are different models. In one model, the charity basically licenses the use of its name to the party that actually collects, sells and keeps the proceeds from the vehicles and there is another where the charity receives a flat fee per vehicle, no matter how much the vehicle sells for. In others, a set percentage of the proceeds goes to the charity. The program I’ve donated to uses the percentage model for vehicles that are sold and receives an average of 70-80% of the proceeds. I’m explaining all of this because I’m sure I am not the only person who looks at this sort of thing when deciding where to donate. I wouldn’t donate to a program that used one of the first two models, or one that used the percentage model where the charity received less than 50% of the proceeds.
It was very easy- I just had to meet the representative and give him the title. He then removed my registration sticker and put a sign in the windshield stating that this vehicle was donated to his organization and awaiting a tow.
There are other sorts of programs run by different sorts of charities for example, a charity that serves the poor may give a car that runs to a person who needs a car or a charity that provides job training may first use the car for it’s training program and then sell the car or a charity that provides food to the homebound may use donated vehicles to make deliveries.
A few friends have donated cars and were quite happy with what they got tax-write-off-wise. A couple were wrecks but a couple others were good running cars but too old to really have trade value and too new to be classic.
I donated my Saturn after the air conditioner died. The car was 10 years old and I was ready to replace it…I looked at selling it and trading it in, but it wasn’t worth all that much. So I donated it, and considered the difference in what I would get back financially as an actual donation from me.
I donated my late in-laws’ car to my local public radio station in 2013. It was super-easy, I met the tow truck, signed some paperwork and waved bye-bye to the car.
We’ve donated several cars to one or another of these programs. We tend to drive our cars until they aren’t drivable anymore, so getting a $500 tax deduction is the best deal we’re going to get. I assume they sell the cars for parts…unless they happen to run some sort of auto shop program.
Dumped a car at Car Cash. Guy drive it 3 blocks, hard, and then low-balled the price like crazy. He did the whole attitude hand-in-the-face disrespect thing too.
Know the worth of it. if that’s the price, take it. Don’t waste more than 5 minutes haggling, and if the guy is below your price, take those keys & walk. Feel free to tell anyone yipping at your hears to get lost.
I donated a car to Salvation Army once. It was just drivable, and needed a new head gasket.
They used it in their training program, fixed it up, and then somehow it ended up in the hands of a crazy person who drove it into a bunch of other cars, doing tons of damage in another state.
As the last person to title the car, I was initially held responsible. I contacted SA and forwarded a copy of the summons I had received. Their lawyers made it all go away, but I never got a full explanation, which was scary.
Many (most? all?) states have a way to file a transfer with the DMV. In Kansas, e.g., it’s called the Seller’s Notification of Sale (warning: PDF): “Hey, DMV, I done transferred it to So-and-So, so even if they don’t title it, go bother them if there’s a problem.” It’s cheap insurance when disposing of any vehicle under any circumstances where you didn’t actually see it go to the crusher.
We had a program here where a charity actually fixed up broken down cars and gave them to poor families who needed transportation. To me that’s a better use for a vehicle on its last legs.
[slight hijack] There *can *be a large difference to the donator as to the tax deduction if the donatee agency uses the vehicle vs. sells it. If they keep & use it, you can deduct Fair Market Value. If they sell it, you only get to deduct what they get for it. That’s the difference between retail & wholesale. [/hijack]
Otherwise, doreen pretty much has it.
Though I’ve never heard of the charity getting as much as 70-80% of sales price, I’m not close enough to it to ask for a cite for that number.
I donated a 92 Ford van to a program earlier this year. It wasn’t terribly driveable and salvage was probably the result, but I did all the DMV paperwork and they swore that if it ended up stuffed with drugs in another state or country, I could not be held responsible. That was my main concern.
From my POV, I had a worthless hunk of junk that would be a hassle to get rid of. I was happy for someone else to take it away and get some value out of it. I think that people with cars that are worth trading in probably do that, but we always drive our cars into the ground first.
One thing to keep in mind is that there was a rule change a few years ago that made the whole process a lot less profitable for everyone involved (except the IRS). It used to be that you could claim the book value of the vehicle you donated, which meant that if you had an expensive but likely slow-selling (or simply overvalued on paper) vehicle, donating it and taking the deduction was a spectacular deal (assuming you were in a tax situation to benefit from it.) So the charities would get a lot of fairly nice cars and the occasional really nice asset like a $100,000 boat or RV.
With the rule change, the donor can only claim what the charity actually gets for the vehicle (except in cases like Spiderman mentioned where they actually use the vehicle.) Since the vast majority of donated cars go straight to the same auction channels that dealer trade-ins do, the deduction is generally not going to be more than you’d get trading it in or selling it. So most of what gets donated these days is stuff that isn’t even remotely worth the trouble trying to sell and would otherwise probably be getting sent to the scrapyard.
From the charity’s point of view, there still can be some fundraising potential with vehicle donations but it isn’t the huge gravy train it used to be and the margins are now super-thin. A couple of the local groups I’m familiar with that used to have vehicle donation programs have discontinued them in the last few years because they were barely clearing the overhead to run them.