Where to donate an old car?

[taipeitigers.livejournal.com]

I hardly drive so I cannot justify keeping my old car.  The problem is I don't feel comfortable selling on craigslist, etc.  I found some old posts about the car donation dated 2007.  Does anyone have recent experiences with car donation?  Which charity do you recommend?  If I choose to donate my car, are there things I should pay attention to?  

Thanks,

Comments

[ruthling.livejournal.com]

last year I donated my car to WBUR and it seemed to have gone fine. There was some paperwork, and they wound up selling the car for scrap which may or may not have been a shame. I got the things I needed for my taxes pretty quickly and they picked up the car when they said they would. I think many charities use the same brokers, so it would probably be similar with another organization.

[cowhockey.livejournal.com]

I live in NYC now, but when I signed up with http://www.kars4kids.org/ and they were at my place within 24 hours. They showed me how to fill out the paperwork and everything.

[londo.livejournal.com]

I'd vote against those guys based purely on how much of an annoying earworm their jingle is, but this is probably one of the worse criteria to use when picking a charity.

[ron_newman]

I was about to say something similar ...

[ruthling.livejournal.com]

ditto, a bad reason but a compelling one nonetheless.

[pearlythebunny.livejournal.com]

I donated a car to the Franciscan Children's Hospital in Brighton. They picked the car up from my driveway in Somerville.

[grapefruiteater.livejournal.com]

My understanding is that usually donated cars are sold for scrap. The idea is that you could easily do that yourself—the procedure is much the same—but the tax write-off can be worth more to you financially than the $150 bucks the junkyard would give you for your old car.

[clevernonsense.livejournal.com]

You can only get the actual $$ received by the charity for the deduction, rather than the old way of using the KBB value.

[hiddenbear.livejournal.com]

A better reason than their annoying jingle would be percent of money that actually reaches the charity. The kars4kids organization takes a chunk off the top before the kids see a dime. Better to go straight to an actual charity, than through an intermediary.

[omster.livejournal.com]

The Network/La Red (http://www.tnlr.org) takes car donations, and they are an amazing organization.

[grapefruiteater.livejournal.com]

Well, and it's only worth your while if you itemize your deductions. I wanted to point out that it's standard for donated cars to be sold for scrap. If someone doesn't want that to happen to their car, they should find another way of getting rid of it.

[hikermtnbiker.livejournal.com]

I seem to recall a charity that provided donated cars to folks who needed transportation in order to work. It seems like a much better idea than crushing it for scrap if your car is running OK. I'll have to poke around and see if I have the info somewhere.

[theorangebird.livejournal.com]

I donated mine to the Mass. Adoption Resource Exchange (http://www.mareinc.org/Car-Donation.html) a year and a half ago. One of the reasons I picked them is that, if possible, they try to sell the car (at a used car dealership in Waltham) vs. send the car straight to auction. (Alas, thanks to a dead transmission, mine was sold for parts.) The donation process was simple - it was easy to schedule a pickup. I think you can drive it to the dealership in Waltham if your car's still running.

I'm not a tax specialist, but if you plan on using the car donation as a tax deduction, it's a good idea to take note of the IRS rules re: what documentation you need. This can vary based on the value of the vehicle. For me, the toughest part was to see my plateless car towed away :(

Hope this is helpful!

[frotz.livejournal.com]

In general, pay attention to whether it's a front-end service organization that actually only passes a minuscule amount to the actual charity vs. something more useful.

The Good News Garage people that Car Talk is always pushing seem good. I gather they deal with things in-house when possible, and I filled out a web form Thursday night, and got a call Friday offering a Monday pickup. I didn't even hear the car get dragged out of the driveway and had a receipt in the mailbox.