Hi guys,
I have just started a car donation website and I wanted to know what you (as petrolheads) think of it. The site can be found at www.giveacar.co.uk.It has been set up to help people donate their cars to charity, just as they might donate their clothes or furniture. The sole aim of the service is to raise as much money as possible for registered charities. The venture is entirely voluntary and not-for-profit. My motivation for setting the service up stems from a belief that charities in this country are overlooking a fantastic opportunity to generate income. In the USA the practise of car donation is very common and every year, hundreds of thousands of vehicles are given away. In the UK however, car donation is pretty much non-existent, despite the existence of many underused and/or unwanted cars. Giveacar was set up to change this, and divert the value of these cars to good causes.
The service we offer is very simple. We pick up any car, roadworthy or not, and either sell or scrap it, donating all the proceeds of the sale to the charity of the former owner?s choice. There is no charge for this service as we account for all costs. The only costs that are taken out of the donation are the auction house charges, which we cannot avoid. All other costs (such as petrol, vehicle insurance etc.) are carried by Giveacar and by our volunteers.
At the moment we are working with five ?core? charities, one of which is Leukaemia Research. All the charities support and believe in the concept, granting us permission to accept donations on their behalf. Those donating a car can chose to support any of these charities, or, if they have a specific cause in mind, can donate to any other registered charity.
I?ll keep the explanation short because I don?t want to lose your attention. If you want a fuller explanation have a look at the site at www.giveacar.co.uk. I have a few questions for those of you that have read this far:
1) Do you think people will use the service?
2) Do any of you know someone who might be interested in covering the story ? a motoring journalist, PR agent etc? I have no background in PR and would appreciate some help publicizing the site.
3) What do you think of the concept?
As you can imagine from the questions I am asking, this site has been launched very recently. I am still yet to send out a press release. I just wanted to get a public opinion of the site before I really drive it forward. Anyway, have a look at the site at www.giveacar.co.uk
Cheers
Tom
I made the links live as this seems to me to be worthwhile and non commercial. HJ
Edited by Honestjohn on 19/11/2009 at 09:47
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You need to do a bit of Googling for information such as:
www.fancyacar.co.uk/advice/car-donation/
www.oxfam.org.uk/donate/valued/donateacar.html
and get an idea of what is involved.
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Tom,
I wouldn't have your personal address and mobile number on your website like that! There are very good reasons why people (especially people advertising a service implying they will have items of value at their home) don't make those details public...
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As stated on the website, I dont ever take the cars home, I just transport them to a motor auction. Point taken though, I just think its important to get peoples trust.
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Thanks for your input,
The links you have provided both point to the same scheme, Oxfams. As they say on their website, they have sold over 100 vehicles in just over three years. This is a great figure, but if you compare Oxfam's program to a similar one in the States, the difference in scale is huge. 685000 people have donated their cars to the National Kidney Foundation in the States since 1983 and thats just one program. I am not trying to take anything away from Oxfam, I just think that people who donate their car should be given a choice of which charity to donate the sale price to. This concept is too small scale for individual charities to take on, therefore having a centralised website which accepts donations on behalf of all charities I feel is the way forward. This is the only way car donation can reach a bigger scale within the UK.
Tom
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Yes, that's because it's still something to take off in the UK - it seems to be a way of life in the US, partially perhaps because of the tax benefits.
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That is because the whole tax system is different in the US, making all forms of charity donation much easier and beneficial.
There is also a different culture of car buying the US (buying the next model year etc) so that changing cars was much more common that in Europe from the 1950s onwards. Hence cars became disposable and giving them away was not a bad idea.
I am not sure who in the UK would give their car away, unless it was worth very little (and at present all roadworthy cars are worth at least £2,000 on a trade in for a new one). However it is a useful way of getting rid of an unwanted car.
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Few points that strike me...
You mention five charities but I only see four linked. Change the generic car behind tow truck logo, too home made website looking. Not overkeen on the narrow site display format for the same reason. It's only when right in the small detail you mention this is mainly a London service.
I have to agree you need to keep contact details on or it's going to look like a scam.
In my time I've helped loads of folks dispose of vehicles in varying ways for nominal sums just to make it a trouble free process.... nothing worth more than about £600 though.
As a 35yr+ supporter of the Lifeboats I have to ask if you've contacted them?
You have serious competition from the scrappage scheme as mentioned above.
Finally if this took off surely you couldn't cover the logistics witghout making a charge? I mean if looked at in a business like way the cost of admin, collection and transport for a £50 scrapper would exceed its worth.
I hope it all works out for you anyway.
Edited by M.M on 19/11/2009 at 10:41
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Yes, I have put up the details of four charities because I am still in negotiations with a fifth (there are loads of things like commercial particpatory agreements etc to go through). I havent released the site properly yet because of this.
Scrap cars are ideal for me. There are hundreds of companies all over the country that will pick up a car and give the owner £50. I have vetted a few of these in London so they will pick up the cars and pay giveacar directly. This ensures logistical costs are kept to a minimum. For the more valuable cars, it is worth my time and money going and picking them up.
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The first link needs editing!
If I had an old car and did not need it anymore I guess getting rid off it through the scheme is easy and gets rid of a big headache. Sadly I haven't
However I am weary of many charities and would not want my money going to some freaks or dubious organizations out there that often seem to pass themselves of as charities
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Good luck with this.
Wouldn't it be more effective if you were registered as a charity though?
I don't know much about the workings & obligations of registered charities, but at the very
least I would have thought it sensible purely in terms the Inland Revenue's view of your status?
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Hi Tom,
Sounds a laudable idea, but you might have trouble persuading the British public to 'give' so generously at the moment.
High-ish scrap metal prices, Ebay disposal - and the scrappage scheme will all conspire against you.
Also, you might like to register and use the .org.uk extension if you are genuinely not-for-profit....
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Hmmmmm
What is "not for profit"
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I like your idea
iIs a good way of using resources that are all there from a worthwhile car of no use to the present owner to the truck driver who will get paid to move it when business is slack
I have a few reservations though
we get a lot of bags dropped off on our step almost weekly by charities begging for the discarded type clothes that i like to work in and a lot of people now see that these clothes are getting skimmed off by gangsters and their south afrikan cousins
You need to have in place a watertight collection procedure so that your idea doesnt get bad advertising from people willing to rip the system off.
My suggestion would be get a proper named personality behind the scheme to give it credance and whiter than white credentials and then get it bounced onto something like your local nightly news service then onto something like the one show as without proper coverage good schemes like these always die.
Remember advertise or die is the blood of all businesses looking for new blood all the time.
I wish you all the best in your venture.
One other thing im in yorkshire where we have a different attitude to southerners attitudes to giving, so bare this in mind too as it could either work in your favour or the opposite
i wrote this out this morning but held it back until i saw other respondees responses but it still mainly holds water i believe
i too would register as a charity and get some helpers in to do the books so you are squeeky clean
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Giveacar, have you approached any local authorities?
Many have Abandoned Vehicle schemes and may already have a contractor employed to remove such vehicles from their land but if a contract came up for renewal ytou may have a case for taking over such a service and giving something back to the 'community' too.
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Tom, seriously have a look at whether you can become a registered charity. Help the Hospices is a registered charity whose aim is, as the name suggests, to Help all Hospices by giving them a central resource etc.
It would be interesting to see if what you do would comply or not with Charity regulations. If not, are you setting up a company, will you need accounts, you would need paper trails I guess.
I admire your team's willingness to do this free of charge but is that sustainable? You may well just have won £45m on the lottery and the answer is yes, but I could see this being a full-time, time-consuming job.
Could an auction house not give you free sales in return for a "partnership" agreement.
re Gift Aid, it won't be as simple as you are saying - there will need to be a paper trail to satisfy HMRC. As part of that, when you give items to be sold (similar to handing in clothes to a charity shop), you must offer the "donator" the opportunity to get their money back
ie. hand over car, you sell car for £100. You then need to go to donator to say "are you happy to donate this £100 to charity x" They then have the option of saying no, just give me my money back! So be wary about this.
The charity I work for runs an ebay shop for better or unique items that are handed in to the shops. However the number of suitable items received for this is reducing as people see the benefits of ebaying, gumtree etc themselves.
Why give you a car and receive no money, as opposed to sticking on ebay and keeping proceeds themselves? That is what you will be up against.
But that could also be an opportunity - if you had the storage space, ebay them rather than car auction them or a bit of both?
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I like the idea, I would be much happier giving a scrap car away to a charity rather than some dodgy bloke giving me £50 for it only to sell it on to some poor soul for £500.
Just one question what is in it for you?
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It can have my Escort Estate if it wants. Not road legal but might pass another MoT or two and drives quite well despite foibles. Engine (16v 1.6) and s/h gearbox well run-in, snigger, but both still hearty and solid.
This is a serious offer if there's any interest. I don't like the surviving local scrappie. Bunch of damn hoods. My favourite one has been elfed and safetied out of existence.
It's in West Sussex by the way. Drives too, but documents expired or nearly.
Edited by Lud on 19/11/2009 at 18:09
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Thought you were in central London lud?
PS I am sure if you put it on gumtree there will be takers, but then you may just get cheeky sods.
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make sure all paperwork done lud before you let it go as we have rolling road tax now and the registered keeper is responsible ad finitum,you did sorn it yes?
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Hi Lud,
Many thanks for your offer. As this car is not road legal, if you do go ahead with the donation it will be scrapped. This is unless it would fetch a reasonable amount at an auction. It would help to know what reg etc it is. If you could contact me through the site, either by calling me direct or sending me an email I would very much like to discuss this further with you.
Thanks
Tom
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A lot of you seem t be questioning my intentions. To answer this question I'll take a quote from the website:
'When discussing this website with friends and charities, the number one question I was asked was: ?Is there a commercial aspect to this venture?? The simple answer is no, and in fact I will not be able to avoid losing money. I rationalise the money I spend on Giveacar by thinking of it as a high-yield charitable investment. For example, if I spend £1000 developing the website and picking up the cars, then I might hope to generate £10000 for charity. When the service develops further, I would hope to attract corporate sponsorship to ensure the finances remain sustainable.'
Yes I understand that I will lose time and money starting this thing up, but I believe it has the potential to generate a large amount of revenue for charities, and that fact alone motivates me. The fact that someone on this thread has offered to donate a car shows that I might be right. If the concept does work, I will open up a new untapped source of revenue for charities that does not interfere with any of their other fundraising efforts.
Regarding the points about registering as a charity, I have spoken to the charities commission, and they said that a venture such as this cannot be registered as a charity. For this reason I have asked the permission of registered charities to ensure my website is credible.
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