Did you know that you can donate an unneeded car to the Fellowship? These donations can be counted as part of your annual pledge or be a separate donation. CarsForCharity.net has been used by several congregants; we cannot endorse them specifically or guarantee what your experience will be.

Notes: If you are considering selling your car yourself or if you expect a certain dollar amount for the sale of your car, donating your car may not be the best choice as part of the benefit of donating is the elimination of the “hassle” of disposing of unwanted car. If you are interested in having the value of your car estimated before donation, please contact the car donation charity of your choice, or you can contact the Fellowship office or Treasurer for more information. Please know that the Fellowship as an organization, nor any of its representatives, can make endorsements or guarantee results. Also, please remember that the details of websites are subject to change at any time. 

Read on to see what the experience of one household was with donating a car.

How We Donated an Old Car to the Fellowship

By Wayne and Chris Itano

In Summer 2012 our younger daughter Michelle moved, with her husband Kevin, to Rockefeller University to start a postdoc job. Since they no longer needed a car and couldn’t afford to park it in Manhattan anyway, we bought it from her. Michelle and Kevin drove out from North Carolina, dropping off the dog in Arkansas with his parents and the car and two cats with us. They assured us that they would come back for the cats when they had a place where they could keep them.

This left us with a 1995 Toyota 4Runner with 125,000 miles that we no longer needed. We could have sold it ourselves, but that can be quite a hassle, so we decided to save the trouble and donate it for the benefit of the Fellowship. Besides, we had just been told that it needed $900 of work to replace a rusted-out exhaust system, not to mention a cracked windshield which was not covered by our insurance.

On the advice of people we knew who had used them before, we went through Cars for Charity, Inc., which is a Colorado-based 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization.

To complete the donation process online, go to the home page for Cars for Charity (http://carsforcharity.net). (Note the .net, not .com, and note that there are organizations with similar names, like Cars4Charity.com or VehiclesForCharity.org.) Click on the “Donate My Car” button in the center of the page. The next screen offers a drop down list of charities (in alphabetical order). Select our Fellowship from the list and then click the “Start Your Vehicle Donation” button. You will be stepped through providing the necessary information to complete the donation process. If you prefer, you may contact the Cars For Charity organization by phone at (888) 755-5435 and speak to a representative to make your donation.

Within a few days after submitting the web form, we received a phone call and arranged for the pickup. Since it wasn’t convenient for us to be around when they could next come to pick it up, we hid the key under the floor mat, left the signed title in the glove compartment, and asked them to remove the license plates and leave them under our door mat. They came and towed the car, left the license plates, and left a receipt.

After about four weeks we received a letter stating that the car had sold at auction for $1,800. After checking with the Fellowship Treasurer, we found that the Fellowship had received a check for $1,633. The difference, $167, is the amount Cars for Charity retained for providing the service. This is quite good. There are other organizations that take a bigger “cut.” We could deduct the entire $1,800 on our taxes. Cars for Charity sent the IRS Form 1098C, which we needed to document the contribution.

The transaction was very simple and hassle-free. We could have designated the contribution to be part of our pledge, but since we hadn’t been expecting this when we made the pledge we decided to make it an extra contribution.

This page was updated on February 25, 2020.