Why couldn't GOODWiLL resell their DONATED cars....

Factual Questions
1

I once “gave” an old clunker (Toyota Corolla with 300K miles, 1994) that still ran PERFECT to Goodwill. Having been “hard up” for money in the past, transportation is second only to housing, and food in concerns for many people “just making it or living on the edge”. In fact, many of these people either due to credit, or lack of much on hand monies are forced into paying many MULTIPLES of true used car value from places like J.D. Byrider. However, someplace like GoodWill could CHANGE all that. My old Klunker Toyota could be sold for say $200.00 (almost pure profit for GoodWill since it was donated) to someone who might get a few YEARS out of that car. Time enough for them to get off the “financial treadmill”, graduate from school, or get a better job.

However, it appears instead that GoodWill either sells these cars for parts OR sells them at aution where they go to used car lots where they are really MARKED up. If GoodWill is unwilling to offer this “service” perhaps some other non-profit could be created to do the same thing (with the proceeds being donated to some worthwhile cost). This is an idea that could serve as a powerful, “safety net” for many who fear their next “car ending” repair (in many cases the loss of transportation means the loss of a job, and it’s a downward spiral from there).

2

You can read about Goodwill here, and more about their stores here.

As you can see, Goodwill does not sell things to people who “need” them. They sell to anyone who will buy and use the profits in community service programs. Anyone, no matter how affluent, is allowed to shop at Goodwill. So if they started selling cheap, reliable cars, everyone would be heading to Goodwill to buy them. You would be better serving them if you sold the car yourself and donated the profits to Goodwill (assuming you can make a higher profit than they do).

Now if you (or another charitable organization) decided to sell/give the car only to those who “need” it, you’d have a heck of a time deciding which of the many worthy candidates deserve it. I don’t know enough about charities to know if there is a non-profit org. which does this, or how they go about making such decisions.

3

for my three year old sons clothes. I can generally buy twenty or THIRTY outfits for the price of one or two at Wall Mart (often of superior quality). However, no comparible analogue exists for automobiles so far as I am aware. IF it did then you would probably be able to buy reliable, used cars for anywhere from $200.00 to maybe $1,500 dollars (if they were initially donated). This would be a valuble thing for many in society. I am not saying that it should be resticted specifically to the needy any more than current Goodwill products are (except perhaps to prohibit dealers from buying up all the good cars that come in en masse). Here’s the difference someone can buy the clothes, shoes ect. that I donate to GoodWill every few months on the cheap. However, I’m not aware of the donated automobiles even being offered to the public for sale at any price (if they are they are not marketed widely).

4

Well… as others have noted there are a couple of problems with your scenario. I buy stuff at Goodwill all the time for fun. Some of the fun stuff I keep as curiosities and most I resell on eBay.

Based on my interactions with shoppers at Goodwill and the Salvation Arny stores (and I don’t want to sound obnoxious, but I think I’m correct). In many cases I don’t think the people that people poor enough to only be able to afford a $ 200 car would be capable of evaluating, servicing or maintaining it. The majority of people inquiring after older cars at the Salvation Army (local Goodwill doesn’t do cars) seem (to me) to be to be well fed middle class and lower middle class shade tree mechanics, looking for a ride they can refurbish and sell or use. I have never seen (or heard of) a local used car dealer fooling with the Goodwill cars as most of the cars for sale are pretty high mileage and fairly well worn interior-wise, which does not make for an attractive “on the lot” car, and many have hidden, expensive problems that will not allow the car to pass inspection without service.

IMO really poor people would be better off getting car from one of the shade tree guys than getting it directly from a charitiable organization even if it costs them a few hundred more. At least that way the shade tree guy has usually given it the once over mechanically, the car is usually has an inspection sticker and there is someone they can go back to for reatively cheap service on the car.

5

I dunno.

My first thought is, “Gee, I could dump my barely-running klunker at Goodwill and get its blue book value off my taxes! And if it won’t start for THEM afterwards, and they wind up having to get it towed, it isn’t my problem!”

There is also the matter of requiring each store to have at least one mechanic on hand, for this very reason.

There is also the matter of each Goodwill outlet needing the equivalent of an extra parking lot to store all these sale cars.

The upshot of all this is “more trouble than it’s worth.”

6

They’d sell it anyway. At least, the bastards that run my local Goodwill would. They get truckloads of broken, unsellable boxed furniture from the Target next door and sell it “as is”, knowing it’s completely useless to anyone who buys it.

Wow, that was sort of a hijack. Anyway, BAH Goodwill!

7

I’m in this exact position. I have a car that I don’t need at all anymore. It’s in decent running condition but has 180,000 miles on it. I don’t trust it anymore(even as a commute to work car). I don’t want to make any money off this car and would love to just give it to someone. What it’s coming down to for me though is reliability…I’d hate to ‘donate’ this car to a friend of mine and it go kablooey on them within a few weeks.

I think that’s what Goodwill does in a way. They don’t need people pissed of at them for selling them cars. They may be able to sell them at a huge profit…but I’d bet in a large percentage of times the persons who’d bought the cars would be coming back to them with complaints.

As far as I’ve figured, Goodwill is doing the best for all involved by getting anything they can for the car(s), and washing their hands of it.

-K

8

I bought my car in FL at the Salvation Army about a year ago. They were doing exactly what the OP suggests, taking cars in as donations, fixing them up a bit, put them on the lot and sell them. A couple months after I bought my car, they went the auction route. I’m not sure why they switched, maybe they get a quicker turn-around that way, it’s all profit to them anyway. Plus, all the other headaches of running a lot.

9

Actually, while Goodwill doesn’t do this, there are lots of charities that do. In my area we donated an old car to a group who found transportion for women living in a women’s shelter.

Google car donations or look in the yellow pages and you should come up with something.

10

of approximately the same, year, make and model as the one I donated. The closest I came was a 1992 Toyota Corolla (seems like they have mainly junky American cars rather than Toyotas and Hondas) with 220.000 miles. They wanted $2,500 CASH or $250.00 per month for 24 months buy here pay here. Having been in the mortgage/ and appraisal business for years, I saw many people who “trapped themselves by necessity” into these sort of poor purchases. I am simply suggesting that the ability to purchase “basic transportation” at reasonable prices could be a valuble public service (and could probably generate revenues if they were donated or sold for cheap to an NPO). Perhaps, Goodwill is not the right “fit” (in which case perhaps they shouldn’t advertisem so much for used car donations). However, this is the sort of initiative that would make the world a “little” better place, and would also make it a “little” more feasible to improves ones financial situation.

11

I doin’t think you’d be doing such poor people any favors by selling them cars of questionable reliability. There are safety issues, and if the car breaks down, as some of you fear, they’ve got a useless car to dispose of (cars are a responsibility) and they’re out the purchase price, tax, license, insurance…

Yeah, I agree that the more economically vulnerable get taken advantage of, due to their lack of options, ‘Goodwill cars’ wouldn’t help much. If you wouldn’t give it to anyone you actually care somewhat about (everyone knows a teenager who’d love a shot at owning a car), then why is it a ‘favor’ to a stranger?

A less than reliable car can be an asset in the hands of someone who has the knowledge, tools, time and inclination to repair it (and the ability to accurately assess the costs of rehab) but most people -rich or poor- don’t have that. They also don’t have friends with all the above. [They may have friends (relatives) who think they have all that, but they often turn up lacking in ability or execution. That’s why so many poor areas are littered with cars in various stages of repair, that will never see another thousand miles]

For those who know how to fix cars, can get the tools, and have a place to store and work on it, there are no shortage of possible bargains. In my teens/20s, I learned to be picky about the free or nearly free cars I accepted. Garages are, too. why would my rejects be any less of a burden on someone with less resources?

Further, in many states, there are sticky legal issues. In the 1980s, any individual or business in Massachusetts that sold three cars in the previous 12 months was automatically considered a “used car dealer” for the purposes of implied warranty and lemon laws. I think this is still the law today.

This would be a real liability burden for Goodwill. They can (mostly) get around it by selling the cars explicitly “AS-IS”, but then the buyer would nave NO warranty – the law explicitly disallows any middle ground tpo prevent shady dealers from worming around consumer protections with their own craftily worded “warranties”

If you want to give the car away to a “deserving buyer”, why not sell it or give it away yourself? It costs only the price of a classified ad in a cheap local paper. Your reasons for not doing this probably apply a hundredfold to Goodwill. (except, perhaps, the possibility of charging off an inflated deduction against your taxes)

12

Goodwill has to be somewhat picky about the things it accepts. For each item they accept, they have to ask themselves, “How much would anybody at all pay for this item? How long would it take up space before someone pays that much for it? How much would it cost us to fix it to get it into sellable condition? How much would it cost us to junk this item when it fails to sell?” If any of the answers to these questions would mean that it costs them a significant amount before selling the item, they will not accept the item.

This is why they no longer accept clothes that are significantly stained or torn. The market for used clothes is too small these days for it to be worth doing major repairs or cleaning on clothes. Indeed, 90% of the clothes they do accept do not get sold in their thrift stores. They are shipped to third-world countries, mostly African. The 10% remaining is enough to satisfy the market for used clothes in the U.S.

They’ve done the math for used cars and it’s not worth their time to sell cars themselves. It would cost money for the lot that would have to be used to store the cars awaiting sale. It would cost money to have the cars repaired (and if they sold them “as is” they would get less money). It costs money to junk the cars that aren’t sold.

13

I think this could be a valuble service for some NPO to start here’s how everyone benefits:

  1. The NPO gets cars for next to nothing or free.

  2. The ones which have serious “drivetrain” problems are sold in a manner similar to the way Goodwill disposes of them today.

  3. However, the ones which still run good (such as the Toyota that I donated) get a once over, and any “minor” repairs that they are capable of doing and which “make sense”. All sales are “as is”, but low cost mechanics would be part of the deal. Furthermore, even if the car dies after six months you only paid maybe $600 instead of $2.500 hundred to the buy here pay here place (and their cars are not known for their reliability either).

  4. The person buying the car avoids the JD Byrider 20% interest rate, AND hyperinflated prices (they inflate the price and the interest for extra profit, and still usually sell poor vehicles), and probably gets a car that is “in the same ballpark” with regard to quality. Maybe the prices woud range a little higher than I hoped but the key would be that the NPO was not in business to make a profit, but to offer a service (think Habitat for Humanity).

  5. In addition, the NPO could offer lower cost mechanics than are typically available in most areas to help poorer people keep the cars that they currently have running. Consider, that I used to have a mechanic in a local small town who charged a fraction of the price that I paid in the big city (his hourly rate was similar $40.00 per hour, but he charged for his actual time rather than using a “book” to price the repairs (which seems to have built in profit for the shop) also he would use used parts if requested (inspecting them before he installed them). His prices were typically a third to a half of what I would pay at Pep Boys or Firestone.
    He just retired last year (even with his low prices he did really well for himself) and I’m looking for a “replacement”.

  6. The NPO could still attract monetary donations, and volunteers as do other NPO’s.

A car is usually necessary to have or keep a job (or attend school) especially if you live in areas with little or no public transportation. I submit that a private sector solution to what is a problem for many Americans, could make life a little better for some, and radically improve opportunity for others. However, are there fundamental issues that I am not considering? Might it not be possible to sufficiently limit liability? Would for profit buy here pay here, and mechanics pose to much political opposition?