Benefits of Car Donation (pt.1 )

Donating Your Car To Charity – Part I

All these appeals! What actually happens to the old, used cars that are donated to charities? I know, I know, giving your unloved vehicle to a charity is supposed to be a wonderful thing. And it can be. But often for the wrong people. In many cases, too many cases (some, actual court-type cases), well-meaning donors of used cars to charities are aiding and abetting a rapidly growing mini-industry in charity-blessed scams. What started out as an innocent, well-meaning way to raise a few bucks for established religious, medical, and public welfare charitable organizations, has – in a number of cases – become a great groaning board of free lunch for the operators, the opportunists and even the downright dishonest. For a number of years now, tax season has become peak season for donating the unloved, the abandoned, and the broken vehicles to good causes – especially good causes like a good, healthy tax deduction. Charitable groups now report that an increasing number of vehicles are being donated all year around. Unfortunately, regardless of how generous the vehicular gift, only a percentage of the value goes to good works, the rest goes to people working the system. Donors are deliberately misled by these scammers to believe that their contribution is going to help hungry orphans, or kidney transplants, or remedial schools, or the disabled -- when actually only a percentage of the car's worth actually gets to the charity. In fact, the invasion of the commercial fundraising money-snatchers has become so blatant that in 1999, the state of California initiated some heavy-duty legislation to start controlling some of the charity-cloaked cons. So bad had their incursion been into charity donation coffers that a couple of years back, financial papers turned in to the state attorney general's office by eleven fund raisers showed that only 20 cents out of every dollar collected actually went to the charities.
Tomorrow: Part II. Where your car donation money goes…