Charity Development Fundraising Blog

Every donated vehicle has a story, and this one had a pretty good ending. I’m not complaining, considering the market.

2005 Ford E-350 donated to charity

A month ago I told the beginning of the story of a 2005 Ford E350 Sportsmobile 4×4 6.0L Turbo Diesel, long body, Sportsmobile conversion that was donated to charity.

This van in a good market could sell for above $70,000. (What a nice donation that would make for a charity!) Along with the troubles in the economy in general, though, the recreational vehicle market took a hit, and sales were down. We marketed the van directly to consumers, partnering with Sportsmobiles of the West, knowing that this collaboration put us right in the middle of the sportsvan retail market.

The E350 sold. Not for what we hoped. In this market, we got $50,000, which was considered by Sportsmobiles of the West to be fair market value. That’s a nice donation for the charity and a healthy deduction for the donor. No Complaints.

-Tim

You don’t expect much of a donation from an old car that’s been garaged for a lifetime and neglected for even longer, but this one brought in a cool $8,000.

Lotus, shabby on the outside

It’s shabby, but it’s a 1964 Lotus Elan, a California black license plate car. Its condition? Even a generous appraisal would call it poor. It wasn’t running and hadn’t been registered for ages.

Here’s an interesting thing about the car donation world: most vehicle donation firms send unregistered and non-running older cars straight to recycle (or the chopping block).

We don’t – it’s that screening commitment we have. We look at every car before we move it along, and this is exactly what we did here.

What tipped me off, too, was that fact about the car being garaged for so long. Not just rotting in the backyard, but garaged. That tells me that someone had plans to restore it.

Lotus, shabby interior, beautiful donation

Apparently those plans did not come to fruition.

So, a charity benefited, and, OK, so did car enthusiasts. Once the new owner restores this little beauty, it’ll be on the road (or being raced), and that’s one great way to beautify a highway.

- Tim

Here’s how to get the most from every car donation to your charity: tell your car donors to sell their vehicles themselves, and then donate 100 percent of the proceeds to your charity.

Radical idea? Especially coming from someone who runs a car donation consulting firm? I’ve been told that it is. I’ve also told donors about this radical idea when they’ve asked me how to get the absolute most for their causes.

Unfortunately, most car donors tell me it’s just not feasible for them to sell and process their own donation; most don’t have the time to wait by the phone, the expertise to get their car ready for sale, or enough clear knowledge of the car’s value.

Still, owner sales would be the road to the highest possible proceeds for a charity, everything else being equal.

No fundraiser, whether they’re working within a charity or as a car donation fundraising consultant such as myself, can match a 100 percent donation. In-house fundraisers have overhead – direct costs such as salary and indirect costs, office and maintenance budgets.

Consultants have similar overhead. These costs are ours to bear as they are in any business or non-profit organization, and this is as it should be.

My thought for the day is: beware of any consultant who tries to pass his overhead fees on to you.

Working and Fundraising Together

Our job is to work together – you, the charity organization and me, the consultant – to get the most return for a car donation. This helps your charity, and it keeps your donors happy and loyal to your cause. We’ll never be as perfect as 100 percent, but your charity should be getting the lion’s share of all funds raised.

- Tim Finnigan

Here’s how to get rid of even your most devoted car donor: under-value his car donation.
That’s right: Sell that vehicle he or she donated to charity for less than it is worth.

Giving a car to charity as a gift

His tax deduction will plummet along with his donated cars’ sale price. He’ll wonder why you didn’t care enough about his gift to give it the attention it needed to sell somewhere near fair market value. He’ll think twice, maybe three times, before donating another vehicle to your charity. And what will his negative experience imply about the rest of your charity? Will he lose faith in that too? What will he tell his friends and neighbors about your charity?

To see donors’ vehicles getting less than their fair share of attention drives me crazy.

One of the most important services that car donation fundraisers offer is automotive expertise. We also need to have marketing and fund-raising expertise. It’s all part of the package, and I’d say that any vehicle donation fundraiser who doesn’t have expertise in the automotive industry is not a good bet.

How are you going to know you’re under-valuing a vehicle if you don’t screen it, see it and know its value to begin with?

Automotive vehicles of all kinds are a passion here. So is getting the most return on every donated vehicle. As any non-profit executive will tell you, finding new car donors is a tough job.

Losing them is easy.

– Tim Finnigan

Junk cars – those old cars sitting in someone’s backyard – though not drivable, still have value for non-profit organizations. Charities, not being automotive professionals, sometimes turn their noses up at these low-end donations. “What’s the value of a car that can’t move?” they ask me.

Car being recycled

I have a good answer. They can be recycled. A fair percentage (though not the majority) of cars donated are not road-worthy. They get towed and usually are moved straight into recycling distribution channels. There, they offer a wealth of under-appreciated benefits to charities and communities.

About 85 percent of an automobile is recyclable. Its usable parts move through salvage yards to a second life to repaired vehicles. The leftover metals, plastics, glass and rubber find new life in everything from appliances to automobiles to bicycles. And, depending on the scrap metal commodity market at the time and region of donation (Scrap metal prices are different on the East Coast than on the West Coast), recycling a clunker can often bring as much as $400 to a charity.

Recycling these old vehicles does another good turn for the community, making sure that the old, pollution-spewing vehicles do not return to the road.

We advise our clients to accept almost all vehicles, including old junk cars, because even these old clunkers can bring in significant money for the charity if handled properly. Also, in addition to raising funds for their cause, the charities are doing their part to recycle and reuse.

– Tim Finnigan