I just finally got rid of my 1995 Ford F-150: I donated it to Cars 4 Causes. Â So far, the process has been simple. I called them up at 1-800-766-2273Â and told them about the car (make, model, mileage, condition, etc.) and they evaluated whether or not they would accept it. Â After running it by the “acquisitions” folks, they said they’d take the thing. Â
They are making arrangements with my friend (whose driveway has been home to the car for the last 5 months) to pick it up at no cost to me. Â I’m mailing them the title, and when they receive the car they will mail me the paperwork with a bill of sale. Â Then I can finally take it off my insurance and stop paying property tax on it.Â
Separate from their web site, you can also find their blog, including FAQ and easy steps in a searchable, conversational format. Â Good stuff. Â This made it very user-friendly for me to take care of donating my car located in Connecticut while I am living in Chicago.
Choose your Charity
According to the Frequently Asked Questions, Cars 4 Causes allows car donors to choose the charity which receives 50% of the proceeds from the sale of their donated vehicle. I’m excited that I’ll be able to provide an extra little gift of at least a few hundred dollars to one of my favorite charities.
Other Resources
Check out the IRS guidance for car donors in Publication 4303 here.
Check out the charitable status of any organization through the online version of Publication 78, which is the updated list of nonprofits in good standing maintained by the IRS here
As an example, here are the search results (which are affirmative) for Cars 4 Causes as of January 13, 2009:
Cars 4 Causes on IRS Pub 78
Â
Other Car Donation Services:
Put “Donate Car to Charity” in Google and you’ll pull up 342,000 results, there are lots of organizations with similar names and similar services. Â Some organizations are nonprofits themselves, such as Cars 4 Causes. Â Others are for-profit middlemen who handle all the details of the transaction (and I believe are paid a fee by the charities they support). Â Whether you work with a for-profit or nonprofit, some part of the proceeds from the sale of your car will have to pay the expenses to run the car donation operation, I don’t think it’s necessarily a bad thing to work with a for profit management company as long as they are not charging unreasonable fees to their charity partners (isn’t that what we like about social enterprises?). Â No matter who you work with, just be sure to check out any organization and make sure you understand how the process works, what portion of the sale price of the car goes to charity and what you will be able to deduct, and what you are responsible for.
Author’s note 3.20.09: Because of the increasingly hostile and unsupported comments from some spammers, I have closed comments on this post. Â Everyone’s gotten to say their peace, and I don’t feel additional debate is useful. Â Read through the comments and make your own decision about donating your car to the charity of your choice.
Tags: car donation, cars4causes, charity
January 19, 2009 at 5:30 pm
[...] Go to the author’s original blog: Donate Your Car to Charity « The Philanthropic Family [...]
January 19, 2009 at 5:38 pm
[...] Read the rest of this great post here [...]
January 19, 2009 at 6:45 pm
[...] Donate Your Car to Charity « The Philanthropic Family [...]
January 19, 2009 at 8:45 pm
[...] Here is the original post:Â Donate Your Car to Charity [...]
January 20, 2009 at 9:24 am
Big problem.
These “referral” charities are nothing more than used car dealers.
While they say that 50% of the proceeds go to a charity of your choice, the other 50% goes to nothing more than a used car dealer.
They probably spent more charitable dollars fighting the Ca Attorney generals ongoing investigation and court actions against their highly questionable practices than they gave back to most charities.
Be responsible and give your vehicle to a charity that has enough respect for you to handle the donation themselves.
Your few hundred dollars could have become much more if you had actually done your homework and been more socially responsible about giving.
January 23, 2009 at 10:19 pm
Sorry, Mark, I just found your comment in my spam filter and fished it out. I’m glad I found it, though, because I want to address your comments. In short, you seem more interested in being self-righteous than right, and I reject your insults on both factual and philosophical grounds.
First, you are trying to compare Cars 4 Causes to a used car salesman. Since they are, by definition, dealing in used, donated cars, it’s clear that your intention is not to explain how the business works but to invoke the negative stereotypes of used car salesman: slimy, manipulative, dishonest and taking advantage of ignorant consumers. I don’t think that’s true, and I did do my homework. Since Cars 4 Causes is a nonprofit organization, I can look at its tax return and see exactly where its money goes. Let’s be clear: nobody is getting rich off this over at Cars 4 Causes. The executive director and president (a mother and daughter team who are the driving force behind this charity) made $89K and $84K in 2007, plus benefits. That’s a reasonable salary for the executives of a nonprofit with a $12 million annual budget. And no one is taking profits on top–nonprofits don’t distribute profits.
I particularly find ludicrous your suggestion that I should donate the car directly to a charity of my choice, as the chances are very slim that they will have the ability to process such a donation and turn it into a useful asset. How would they inspect the vehicle or make any needed repairs? If it weren’t running, how would they get it from one place to another? How would they find a buyer? How would they know how much to charge for the vehicle? All of this, on a one-off basis, would be expensive, and yet soliciting donations on any kind of scale would also be prohibitively expensive for a single nonprofit. Managing the donation and sales of used cars is a specialized business. It’s hardly efficient to expect individual charities to develop this expertise and besides it would be a huge diversion from their mission.
Cars 4 Causes allows charities to outsource this specialized business to people who are experts: they solicit donations, pick up cars, find a buyer, manage the sale and handle the paperwork from beginning to end, and just send the remaining cash to charities. I stick by what I said in the post: as long as the organization isn’t charging the nonprofits exhorbitant rates (in the form of siphoning off unreasonable operating costs and leaving little for the charity), I don’t think it’s reasonable to paint car donation organizations with a broad brush of condemnation. Do you also demonize Paychex, which is a for-profit company that handles payroll for many nonprofits? How about the cleaning service? Is it wrong for the nonprofit to outsource this? Of course not. It’s a useful service, and the outsourced companies can provide high-quality service at a cost more reasonable than what it would take for the charities to do it themselves.
Being socially responsible is important to me. But defining social responsibility as only dealing with charities is small-minded. I’m less interested in your legal status (for-profit or non-profit) than your results.
January 23, 2009 at 10:02 am
[...] Donate Your Car to Charity « The Philanthropic Family [...]
January 23, 2009 at 10:05 am
[...] Donate Your Car to Charity « The Philanthropic Family [...]
January 26, 2009 at 8:30 am
[...] Donate Your Car to Charity « The Philanthropic Family [...]
January 27, 2009 at 2:12 am
[...] Donate Your Car to Charity « The Philanthropic Family (thephilanthropicfamily.com) – January 19, 2009Separate from their web site, you can also find their blog, including FAQ and easy steps in a searchable, conversational format. Good stuff. This made it very user-friendly for me to take care of dona… more Donate a Car blog posts … [...]
January 30, 2009 at 2:21 pm
Thank you so much for this post. I approved your comment on our C4C blog this week, that links back to this. We appreciate your support, as does your designated charity.
Of course we are “used car dealers” by definition, if not by philosophy. Our focus is to provide low cost transportation to people who cannot afford a car otherwise, and to support charities nation-wide with money derived from vehicle donations. In answer to Mark’s comments: We feel that the ideal scenario for anyone is to sell the car themselves and to donate all the money to charity. Not everyone can do this, so Cars 4 Causes(R) is able to fill an important role for both donors and charities. We welcome your comments and invite you to explore our business practices at your leisure. I feel confident you will find an ethical and philanthropic organization that gives thousands of dollars to charities every month, and provides exemplary service to our donors on all levels. I, personally have been involved with Cars 4 Causes(R) for several years, both as a donor, and an employee. I am proud to be associated with this organization. Thank you again Sharon. We appreciate your comments and candor.
January 31, 2009 at 4:57 am
[...] Donate Your Car to Charity « The Philanthropic Family [...]
February 10, 2009 at 2:13 am
[...] Donate Your Car to Charity « The Philanthropic Family [...]
February 14, 2009 at 1:57 am
very nice and informative post about Car to Charity.
March 17, 2009 at 9:52 pm
Sharon, What you fail to mention is the Executive Director’s ex husband is really the driving force behind Cars 4 Catses and his company has profited millions and millions of dollars handling the car donations for the charity. I believe over one million a year is what he receives. You know that I am certain. You can fool some of the people some of the time, but…. Somewould consider this a total scam.
March 17, 2009 at 11:02 pm
Sharon, As a follow up to my previous post. From what I can gather, according to their 2007 IRS 990, The Cars 4 Causes Executive Director’s ex husband’s company “Charity Development llc” received almost $1.5 million dollars last year alone for handling the charities car donations (yard sales/operations). This payment was in addition to about $150k the charity paid its own sales managers. So I suppose it is fair to say that the charity doesn’t handle the entire process themselves-it DOES use a for-profit company. I believe I read somewhere that the ex husband stated that he started the charity because he was disappointed that so little of the proceeds from car donations ended up going to the charities. So I guess it would be a fair statement to say that the charity does not give 100% to charity. Please do your research Sharon.
March 18, 2009 at 8:50 am
Bruce,
Thanks for your comments. In the absence of more information, I think having a company that handles the yard sales and operations for $13 million worth of cars receive compensation for that service is not by itself a problem. If they had handled only $2 million worth of cars and received $1.5 million, then I’d be more concerned. Having three sales managers make about $55K each? I’m sure they could do better in a for-profit sales position–those are charity-level salaries for sure. As for the fact that there is some ex-spousal relationship here, again, unless someone is exploiting that relationship to receive “unreasonable” fees, it’s not grounds for my condemnation.
And by the way, I’ve never been to business school but I’m pretty sure that $1.5 million in revenue doesn’t equal $1.5 million in profits. You’re flying off the handle with anger but using the wrong numbers to be outraged about.
I’ll ask the folks at Cars4Causes to respond. It’s been intriguing to me how upset people have been about this post. If it turns out I’m wrong about Cars4Causes, I’ll be sure to change this post accordingly.
In the meantime, Bruce, I would reiterate that I have done my homework but have come to a different conclusion than you. See my comments to your comrade Mark from January 23rd. I’m happy to disagree with you philosophically about whether anyone should make a buck through car donations (heck, do a Google search on the Dan Pallotta book “Uncharitable” to see the debate raging on this very topic), but I’m a little tired of being accused of ignorance and naivete, so forgive me if this response seems a bit short-tempered.
March 20, 2009 at 8:43 am
Dear Sharon.
I feel we should almost come to your ‘rescue’ as you seem to be under attack here for what was – and IS – a wonderfully generous donation you made to your charity.
Let me explain to your readers who we are at Cars 4 Causes®. First of all, as you have seen, we make our organization as transparent as possible while maintaining the required confidentiality of charities and donors. And we’re highly respected in the non-profit arena because of it. You certainly did do your homework, and thanks again for choosing us as a trusted and reputable charity in the car donation arena.
We’re quite open about our founders and our current executives (see our website-about us, our mission and our blog), as well as about our contract with my ex-son-in-law. Cars 4 Causes® was begun as a family concern; we all cared and put our individual talents to work for philanthropic goals. Divorce doesn’t turn ex’s into ogres. Tim Finnigan’s expertise in cars and all things automotive makes him and his company a valuable asset to Cars 4 Causes®.
Cars 4 Causes® does contract with him and his company, Charity Development, and this is not only NOT a secret as your detractors would have you believe, but it is a contract we put out to bid publicly every 5 years. It’s been reviewed by the IRS and by the attorney general. His company is the cheapest and also the most trustworthy company we know of. In fact, you could say he’s a crusader for improved guidelines and transparency within the car donation industry, one of those charity thought-leaders who sets the bar high for the rest of the industry. Because of our relationship with Charity Development, we can proudly say that we have one of the highest returns per donated vehicle in the industry (if not the highest).
This makes some car donation businesses uncomfortable, as he encourages all donors to do homework such as you did – know who you are donating your car to and how much money ends up in the hands of your charity.
You certainly are under attack here. I’d call it cross-fire between those old-school car dealers who want to reap big profits from donations and those of us who feel honored to be part of a cause that helps people who want to donate find a charitable way of doing so.
You’re right on your evaluation of the dollars involved, too. As with most charities, our salaries are not comparable to what our staff and executives could earn in the for-profit world. You can peruse our IRS 990 and see how fair and equitable Cars for Causes® is. Parse the numbers any way you like: Cars 4 Causes® is above-board, making sure car donations bring in the most for their charities as possible, and that the lion’s share of those dollars end up benefiting the charity.
Thank you for being a leader and a voice in philanthropy.
Pat Jessup
Executive Director
Cars 4 Causes