Should You Donate Your Car To Charity

These days everyone wants your used car. Your worthless, jobless nephew wants it so he can sell it to buy more Colt 45. The neighbor would like to set it up on cinder blocks as a classic yard decoration. Your wife wants to keep it like she wants an airplane built in the basement. And your local charity wants you to donate it. All other options being ignored, your nephew is a lout, your neighbor too, your wife facetious, maybe the best answer is to donate your car to charity. But consider well all the possibilities before you call the Goodwill, Salvation Army or DAV and allow them to tow the old auto off.

Is donating a used automobile to a charitable organization truly a good idea? On the plus side your car will find a good home if it is in a condition appropriate for repair and re-use. And if it’s in poor shape the non-profit you donated it too will receive a fair market scrap value for it that it can use in its efforts to make the world a better place. You will also receive a  tax credit according to the market value of the vehicle, and the warm glow of satisfaction that comes from clearing out the junk from the driveway while making the spouse happy and dinging the tax man. Cars, trucks, motorcycles and other unused vehicles are being sought by churches, non-profits and charitable groups at rates seldom seen in the past. Even boats and motor-homes can be donated these days. But what’s the downside?

Perhaps the greatest drawback to giving your car to charity is the jealous rage one suffers when seeing your reconditioned auto whistle by, gleaming with new paint and whitewalls and with some tatooed, goateed smokeless cigarette wielding knucklehead at the wheel. What gives that pierced ear deadbeat the right to enjoy your ride at a reduced rate, you gave it to charity, not the dark lord. Another drawback is the liability. Yes, the non-profit absolves you of all responsibility but just try explaining that to the POPO when the spike haired dude gets pulled over and swears that that false panel holding all the jojoba was there when he bought the car. Another reason not to pass your vehicle along to a benevolent organization is the simple, unstated and overlooked fact that these so called helping hands are in actuality, enablers of the weak minded and the users of our society.