Car donation is as an easy and fast way to remove an unwanted vehicle from your property. But with all the negative media coverage of fraudulent car donation programs it can seem like a daunting task to weed out the fraudulent organizations and select a legitimate charity to make a car donation to. But with just a few simple steps you can make sure your car donation goes to help a great cause.

It is always a good first step to make sure any organization you are thinking of making a car donation to is registered with the IRS as a 501(c)3 non profit organization. You can easily contact the IRS’ tax exempt bureau to make sure you are dealing with an IRS recognized charity. The charity must be a 501(c)3 non profit organization or else you will not be able to take a tax deduction for the car donation. While the tax deduction is not always a donor’s main reason to donate a car, it is certainly important to check before donating to be sure.

It is very important to contact any organization you are thinking of making a car donation to and ask questions about the charity work they claim to do. Unfortunately, the existence of fraudulent car donation programs makes this step necessary. Ask specific questions about the charity work they claim to do. Don’t just accept vague answers like “we help people with disabilities” or “we help underprivileged children”. Ask how exactly they help these people. Do they provide food? Do they provide counseling services? How exactly do they select the people they will help?

It is also important to ask if you are dealing with a middleman. Unfortunately, there are many car donation programs that are middleman companies that take most of the profits from your car donation and only give a small amount to the charity. That is why it is always best to make a car donation to a charity that runs their own car donation office themselves rather than a third party company.

You should also ask questions about how the money raised from your car donation is used. Ask what percentage goes toward administrative expenses (such as salaries) as opposed to programmatic expenses. Programmatic expenses are the expenses a charity incurs as a direct result of the charity work they do. Administrative expenses should be low and programmatic expenses should be high. It is generally a red flag when a car donation program has administrative expenses that are too high. You always want to ask these questions to make sure that your car donation will go to a legitimate charity that will use the money efficiently.

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