My parents just retired, and are getting rid of a lot of their things. Most of the stuff is being given to my sister and me. I was given a car, which is in better condition than my car.
I could probably get a few thousand dollars for my car, but figure, since I’m not paying for my new one, why profit from it. I’ve heard about the donation programs, but don’t know much about them. I researched a little online, but of course, they all seem great on their own websites.
So, have any other dopers donated cars, or know of a charity with a good reputation for this sort of thing?
You are doing such a cool thing, and there are literally thousands of charities which could benefit by your kindness.
I’d suggest that you look for one which touches your heart in some way, and maybe one in your local area, so that you get to see your kindness in action and on those really crappy days we all have, you can look at your old car beetling around and know that in your own way you made the world a brighter place.
The SPCA in most urban areas will accept car donations. One I know for sure that accept them nationwide is the American Lung Association: (800) 586-4872.
I did this a few years ago, when my car was a heap and I didn’t feel like going through the hassle of trying to sell it. I found someplace over the internet. Later I saw an expose of the car-donation “charities” that aren’t really charities, and felt a little concern, but not overmuch because the car wasn’t worth much and I was doing it more to get it off my hands (with some tax advantages) rather than giving money to a charity I cared deeply about.
But, given that news story, I say stick with a name charity.
Also, print off a valuation estimate from Edmunds.com (for your taxes) right away when you donate it. If you wait until later, say at the end of the year when you’re organizing your taxes, the car’s value may have further dropped.
I just want to make sure I’m not donating to one that is going to keep most of the money. I guess I’ll check back tomorrow and see if anyone else has any ideas.
A few years ago I donated my old car ('79 Dodge Aspen) to the local technical college. You get a tax credit and the school uses the car to teach mechanic students to tear things apart without having to worry if it can be put back together (like they have to do when people bring in their cars for the students to service).
Every year, our sheriff’s office in Lake County takes “donated” (i.e. taken from drug dealers) cars and gives one to a high school student with perfect attendance. The sheriff does this for each high school in the County.
Several years ago I lost third gear, and soon thereafter, second gear while driving to a friend’s house. The cost of replacing the tranny was pretty close to what the market value of the car ('83 BMW 320i) would be with a good transmission.
I drove it for a couple of weeks while I contemplated a new vehicle (wind out first gear until I was going just fast enough to make it sputter along in fourth), and began looking into donating it to some organization. Once I’d inquired, they were on me like stink on, well, you know. The apparent boiler room nature of the phone centers for several auto donation organizations made me twitch, so I started looking closer to home and found that Rice University here in town could take it and would likely not sell it; they would put a graduate student behind the wheel.
I felt better about that and decided to donate it to them, and mentioned this to a friend. Well, said friend’s nephew was just starting his undergraduate life at Ole Miss and could use a car. I told him to get the kid over here and when he arrived I let him take it out for a test spin (to see if he thought he could live with the special driving considerations) and then signed the title over to him (and got it notarized). The end result was I knew it went to a situation where it did some good. Got any friend’s in need?
A postscript to the tale: last fall I went to any industry social and ran into my friend’s nephew. He’d just graduated with his geology degree and was still driving the car with no 2[sup]nd[/sup] or 3[sup]rd[/sup] gear. I hadn’t seen him in the intervening years, but it was apparent that I’m his pal for life.
You can also donate it to a local volunteer fire company. You get the tax write-off (not sure exactly how much, maybe Blue Book value?), and the firefighters use it for training.
Yes, we will set it on fire several times and rip it apart with the Jaws of Life.
The experience this provides in invaluable.
Just another option…
My church (or ex-church) has a program called Christian Car Care. The pastor donated his old Taurus wagon to the program. Well, something got screwed up and the ownership didn’t get changed. After a trip to Mexico, he came home to find that his license had been suspended! Apparently the new owner had gotten in a couple accidents or something like that. Well, if you plan on donating your car, be sure that all the paperwork is handled properly!
I donated the only car I ever owned to the Kidney Foundation about seven years ago. Easy as pie.
Tax warning - read an article about seven months ago that the IRS is cracking down a bit - the Blue Book value is often considerably above actual value, and actual value is all you are supposed to write-off. ('Course, I got away with it. ;))
I’ve given a couple to the National Kidney Foundation, which has an extensive and well-established program for it. Just mail your title to the address in their web site, let them know when their appointed towing company can come for it, and the rest is between you and your friendly tax collector. There are many more-local operations, of course, but the NKF will take care of it almost anywhere.
More on this: as you are probably gathering, there are charities which actually USE your car, and there are charities which sell your car for money to benefit their organization. Does it matter to you which happens? If so, keep that in mind when you’re looking for a place, and ask how the car is used.
If you want a charity that will use your car, you’ve got some good suggestions (local automotive tech program, fire department, etc) here. You might also call your local domestic violence shelter. Sometimes they take cars to provide to women who are leaving bad situations and lost their car (if they ever had one) when they left. There are also some charities which take cars, repair them/tune them up in their own special garage, and give them to families in extreme need (often with arrangements for future maintenance). You might call your local recycling/waste management authority–they might field these questions often enough that they have a list of possibilities for you.
I donated my cars to a chaity called Mother Waddels, who give the cars to poor families. Unfortunately, a few days after I gave my car to them, the location I went to burned down. Sad but true.
I donated my old '83 T-Bird to an outfit called The Order of the Purple Heart.
I don’t care in the slightest who they are, what they do, or whether my donation helped anybody in a concrete fashion or not. At the time I was saddled with a piece of crap car worth no more than $750 at best - which could have used another $1000 in repairs and maintenance - assuming I could even find a buyer, which I am fairly confident would have been a long process.
Anyway it was very painless - one phone call, one appointment time, and then some dude shows up with a tow truck and that’s pretty much the end of it except for a minute’s worth of paperwork.
And then the nice tax thing, plus anyone you tell about it thinks you’re some kind of noble humanitarian for donating something of value that was yours to something that sounds like a veteran’s organization or whatever.
In short, a great way to get rid of a car. I recommend it … But if the car is in any kind of good condition then you should definitely first try to sell it so that you can pocket the cache. Cash in hand is way better than any tax credit or good karma.
I had a 1989 Ford Festiva, served me well, but the mechanic said it needed at least $1,000 in repairs, and that didn’t cover the oil leaks. It leaked in more places than it didn’t.
The auto shop at the local high school was more than happy to take it off my hands. The grade 9’s would have the honour of ripping it apart.
I could have called the wrecker and picked up a few bucks for it. In death in filled a higher purpose.
Much as I hate to rain on anyone’s parade, a couple of posts earlier in the thread reminded me of an important point. Heaps of people use charities as a way of getting rid of unwanted junk. If you are thinking of donating something which is in need of repair to a charity, ask them whether they have the facilities to repair it. If they don’t, they’ll be saving you the disposal costs, but they’ll be meeting them out of the budget they set aside to help people.
Generally, if something is in a bad enough state of repair that you won’t bother forking out money to repair it, then the charities or the individuals you are donating it to can’t afford the cost of repairs any more than you can.
