Should You Donate Your Old Car to Charity?

So you’ve got an old car that you’re thinking of trading in to get a new ride. Have you considered donating it? Surely you’ve heard of car donations, there are signs and ads for it all over the place. But have you ever really considered it? Today we’re going to help you answer the question of where you should donate your old car to charity.

Should You Donate Your Old Car to Charity?

Charitable Donations

Donating your car to charity has a number of upsides when compared to selling or trading in yourself. The first, and most obvious, is that you are doing something good for you community. Civic charity is a very noble thing, and there’s nothing more heartwarming than taking care of ones own community. That alone should be reason for people with the funds to get a new vehicle to donate an older vehicle to charity.

Tax Write-off

For the more pragmatic folks, though, there are also considerable financial upsides to donating. For one, you can write the donation off on your taxes. That means that you not only are doing a good thing for a local charity, you’re also saving yourself money come tax time.

For instance, if you donate an old vehicle to a charity and they sell it for $3,000, then you get to write off $3,000 in taxes. Depending on your tax bracket, you could even end up not owing taxes through write-offs like that.

Convenience

How much of a hassle is it to sell your own vehicle? Well, quite, as it turns out. If you’ve ever tried to sell a car yourself, you’ve certainly experienced how difficult it can be to deal with people. Folks will try to argue with the price, waffle with you over little details and just generally jerk you around.

Why subject yourself to dealing with the haggle and hassle? Even trading a car in involves haggling with a professional salesperson, and those folks are more than a headache. Wouldn’t it be easier if someone else could just take the car and sell it for you?

Well, that’s exactly what charitable donations amount to. The charity that receives your vehicle fixes it up, makes it look pretty and then sells it for more than you could probably get. Then, you can write off that larger value on your taxes. Boom, win-win.

Good Cause

When you donate your car to charity, it’s more than just getting you a good tax write-off. The charity in question sells your vehicle and then gives that money to good causes. Not only are you getting a tax break from your old vehicle, you’re making a real difference in your community. $3,000, to use our earlier example, can feed a lot of homeless people, for instance.

It can be hard to find the extra money to donate to the charities that mean the most to us. That’s why car donations are so important. While you might give a few dollars here and there, those little amounts aren’t making a huge impact. When you donate a car, however, that can be a massive windfall for your local humane society or homeless shelter, or whichever charity you prefer.

Even if that’s not your biggest concern, it’s hard to say that it isn’t just easier to donate the vehicle. It gets the car out of your hair (and your garage) and frees up space for your shiny, new vehicle!

How to Donate

Now, you might be sold on the idea of donating but don’t know how to go about it. Well, there are a few ways to donate your old vehicle. The first is to simply look up your favorite local charities and see which of them have car donation processes. If they do, they’ll likely have you drop the vehicle off somewhere and then issue you paperwork to use when writing the donation off on your taxes.

If your local charities don’t have any options for car donations, consider going through donation companies. Cars 4 Causes is an example of a donation company. Also known as 501(c)3 organizations, these companies exist specifically to take in donated cars and sell them for charity.

The cool thing about donation companies is that they often pay you up front for the vehicle and then sell it for a charity for you. That way you don’t even need to wait until tax time to see money from your good deed!

There you have it, the case for donating your vehicle the next time you upgrade. Remember, there’s nothing quite as satisfying as taking care of the people around you.