The Cars 4 Causes Blog. Car Donation Program Nationwide.

Last week’s conclusion of the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen (COP15) succeeded in shedding more light on reducing and eliminating greenhouse gases, a cause that Cars 4 Causes® has been supporting for over a decade through car donations. We realize that our individual actions have global implications, and with the Cars 4 Causes Clean Air Program®, we are doing our part to create a cleaner, greener future.

Since its inception in 1998, the Cars 4 Causes Clean Air Program® has allowed donors to make a positive impact on the health of our environment through generous car donations of their older, less fuel efficient vehicles while simultaneously generating a much needed financial benefit for thousands of charitable organizations throughout the United States.

We’ve gathered some current statistics to give you a better idea of what the Cars 4 Causes Clean Air Program® is doing, and what you can do to help.

• According to the Carbon Fund Organization, unleaded gasoline has 19.56 lbs CO2/gallon.

• According to the Environmental Protection Agency, the average U.S. car usage is 12,000 miles per year.

• While the Environmental Protection Agency’s reports, states that the overall average fuel economy for passenger vehicles of 20.3 mpg. We feel the recent Cash for Clunkers program is more representative of the type of car that we send to our Clean Air Program®. Therefore, according to http://www.dot.gov/affairs/2009/dot13309.htm, the average mpg of a Cash for Clunkers trade-in was 15.8 mpg.

• According to http://www.carbonfootprint.com/plantingtrees.html, an average tree offsets 1 ton of CO2 in its lifetime (100 years)

Based on these assumptions, the average donated car emits nearly 15,000 lbs, (or 7.5 tons) of CO2 every year.  In 2009 alone, Cars 4 Causes received a total of 3,110 car donations that were sent to its Clean Air Program®, and we’ve recycled a total of 36,692 cars since the Clean Air Program® ‘s inception.

That means we’ve kept over 46 million lbs (23,000 tons) of CO2 from entering the atmosphere in 2009. Since we started, the Cars 4 Causes Clean Air Program® has kept over 545 million lbs of CO2 per year from entering the atmosphere!

These numbers are staggeringly large, but to put it into perspective, it would take almost 272,000 trees 100 years to offset that amount of carbon!

While you may not be able to plant eight trees every year to offset your carbon footprint, you can certainly donate your car to Cars 4 Causes, and put an end to those emissions for good.

Cars 4 Causes has always made an effort to improve the health of the environment. We recognize the need for a simple, cost effective way to reduce CO2 emissions, and we are thankful for the awareness that the recent conference has brought to this issue.  We hope that more people will realize the need to reduce these harmful emissions and chose to donate their cars to Cars 4 Causes Clean Air Program® as an easy, proven solution to this global problem.

Tags: Car Donation, car donations, Cars 4 Causes®, COP15, Recycled Car Parts, Recycling Cars

Earlier this week I watched the spirit of charity emerge in a group of sixth graders, and it was worth all the presents under the tree to me. One was my child, the others were friends, and all took part in wrapping gifts for children in need.

The kids, Tyler, Logan and Carley, and moms, Sandy, Patti and Stephanie, all felt the joy that comes from volunteering time, efforts and resources.

The gift program, run by the Ventura County Rescue Mission, is called “The Great Toy Giveaway,” and it’s been going on for over 15 years. The Mission gives away about 3,500 new toys during the holidays, spreading the joy amongst 800-900 families, all of them low-income or families on assistance. The program is funded by the Peter C. Foy Foundation, along with toy donations from Toys 4 Tots and other, local toy drives.

As a mom, I was amazed at the sensitivity and the efforts of all of the volunteer children who came to wrap presents.

But here’s what made my heart burst with an overwhelming joy: The kids with us looked at the piles of gifts all around us as we were wrapping, and said, “This is not enough.” They wanted to give more and they wanted to do more.

We moms encouraged that seed of charity, of course; the next day, we took the kids shopping for presents they wanted to give to the kids at the Ventura County Rescue Mission. And we all went back again to wrap more gifts.

In my work here at Cars 4 Causes® The Charity That Gives To Charities®, I’m surrounded every day by the generosity of people giving through their car donations, yet I am still amazed at the human ability to give so much – and thrilled to see this spirit taking root in my child.

The volunteer kids were a blur, moving fast, putting spirit and energy into wrapping gifts for needy children.

Jonathan Leeper, the Ventura County Rescue Mission volunteer coordinator, tells me that he has children volunteering along with their parents all year long. The kids help serve meals. (The Mission serves 700-900 meals every day.) And the children help clean up the dining room after meals.

The holiday gift-wrapping is one of the most touching for the children, as they see how they can directly help other children who are just like themselves – but not so fortunate.

How wonderful it is to see the growth of charity in the next generation!

Tags: car donations, charity, Volunteer Projects

Car donations that come in during December can still make the 2009 tax deduction deadline. Call right away for details and to see how the IRS timeline fits with your personal tax write-off situation for donations.

The year 2009 has been a wild year for car donations and for the auto industry in general. Much of the news swirled around the federal government’s Cash for Clunkers program. The program itself was quite controversial politically and amongst economics scholars. But for the car donation arena, the program’s impact has been decidedly negative.

We’ve seen that many of the used cars that went into the Cash for Clunkers program might have been destined for charity; they were rerouted instead into the scrap and salvage markets, thus both reducing donations to charities and, also, their flooding of the recycle auction markets reduced revenues charities could get from recycling old cars donated to them. We’ll be talking more about this next year.

HR571 – Legislation with Big Potential for Car Donors and Charities

As one of the foremost leaders in the car donation arena, Cars 4 Causes® is always on top of auto industry, auto recycling, and philanthropy trends. For example, one of the little-discussed news items of the year was HR 571, a legislation introduced in January and referred to the House Committee on Ways and Means (where it has languished all the long year). This bill could undo some of the damage done by the limitations on deductions for charitable car donations imposed by Congress in 2004. HR 571 would allow donors to deduct the fair market value of car donations up to $2500, and the appraised value on donations over $2500. This would help charities; higher value car donations have dropped since limitations were imposed, and charities have been on the losing end.

Cars 4 Causes® is following this legislation on behalf of car donors and – even more – on behalf of the charities that depend on vehicle donations to fund their causes. We’ll keep you updated.

But now, at this time of year, we know most of us are focused on the hustle-bustle of the moment. We’re receiving a rush of year-end vehicle donations, with donors concerned about meeting 2009 tax write-off deadlines. And that’s where our focus is, too.

Call us at 800-766-2273 or chat with us online if you have any questions about your donation. We’re here to help. And we thank you for your generous donations; so many of your charities depend on them.

Tags: Car Donation, car donations, Cars 4 Causes®, donated cars, HR 571, IRS, Tax deduction, Tax writeoff, vehicle donation