DONATE CAR FOR TAX CREDIT: How To Donate Car To Charity Los Angeles Tax Deduction California Charities NJ Massachusetts of Your Choice Seattle

How To Donate Car To Charity Definition

Source:- Google.com.pk

I just finally got rid of my 1995 Ford F-150: I donated it to Cars 4 Causes. So far, the process has been simple. I called them up at 1-800-766-2273 and told them about the car (make, model, mileage, condition, etc.) and they evaluated whether or not they would accept it. After running it by the “acquisitions” folks, they said they’d take the thing.

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. I’m mailing them the title, and when they receive the car they will mail me the paperwork with a bill of sale. Then I can finally take it off my insurance and stop paying property tax on it.

Separate 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 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:

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. Some organizations are nonprofits themselves, such as Cars 4 Causes. 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). 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?). 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. Everyone’s gotten to say their peace, and I don’t feel additional debate is useful. Read through the comments and make your own decision about donating your car to the charity of your choice.

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.

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.