About Us

Why cars and why small charities? It all started with a man named Jim Turner. About twenty years ago, Jim worked for an auction clearing house that only dealt with big, national charities. They wanted clients who had instant name recognition and established infrastructure. He spent many hours on the job getting to know these charities and grew increasingly concerned. They were spending gross amounts of money on administration and fundraising, which ate up most of their profits to do good in the world. The national charities were still getting all of the car donations, since the smaller charities lacked the required infrastructure to acquire cars themselves. How could they bring a car to their headquarters, store it, sell it and absorb any associated risk if the car was worth a minimal amount? The simple answer is that they couldn’t.

Don’t worry, it’s not all doom and gloom, because this is where Donate Vehicles USA comes in, the product of Jim’s worries and hopes. Where there stood a problem, he saw potential. He decided there could be a way for small local charities to receive car donations too, and so, in 1998, Jim founded the business that you’re reading about right now.

There have been good times and bad times through the years, but that’s just the way the business goes. The business started out extremely small with just Jim, grew to a size of about forty employees, shrunk again and is now looking towards expansion. Although that may seem fairly arbitrary, it is anything but. So let us break it down for you.

The original business idea had a simple goal that we still stand by today: keep donations and money local. Through donations-to local charities rather than national ones, money spent in a single town would not only stay there, but also be used to help their local area. This would be accomplished through Donate Vehicles USA, which has the infrastructure that local charities could not afford. In addition, Donate Vehicles USA absorbs any and all risk involved with car donations so that local charities can accept cars without fear. This additional revenue flow allows for said charities to spend more money fulfilling their mission statements rather than on fundraising. With this idea in mind, our company has done quite well. However, every success story has a bump in the road and ours is certainly no exception.

Recently, the tax laws changed. The old laws allowed for those who donated cars to get gross write-offs, making the act quite fruitful for them. Donors were given a write-off for the appraised value of the car, which was a large incentive for many to donate. However, the tax law change was intended to stop this abuse of the system. Instead of getting the appraisal value, donors now get a tax write-off for the value that the charity gets for the vehicle. The amount of higher end cars that were donated plummeted, and business suffered. It took time, but Donate Vehicles USA has bounced back.

At this moment, we are ready to show the world just how easy and important it is to still donate cars, especially to small local charities. Giving these small local charities the ability to accept cars allows for them to have a revenue stream that they may not have otherwise had access to. It keeps the money in the community, allows for less overhead costs and gives these charities a chance to do more. And this time, our expansion isn’t just in our local area—we’re going national. Now our infrastructure can help not just local charities near our brick-and-mortar location, but small ones all over America.

We’re bringing Donate Vehicles USA to you.