Car Dealer Uses Trade-Ins As Car Donations for the NVSF

As owner of a car dealership, I’ve heard a lot of stories and jokes about car salesmen. For fun, one Halloween I came to work dressed up in a tacky polyester suit, wearing an equally tacky Hawaiian shirt underneath. Of course, I had a cigar hanging from the corner of my mouth.

Those closest to me know that I don’t like to take life or business too seriously. That doesn’t mean I don’t care!

Our dealership is well known for helping out with local charities. So when Jeff, one of our salesmen, came up with a new arrival promotion idea that involved trading in people’s oldies as car donations in honor of Veterans Day, I thought it was a great idea.

For one Saturday, in November, instead of offering our usual $3000 trade –in allowance on every used vehicle brought in for a trade towards one of our new arrivals, we offered to take any used trade-in worth up to that amount and make a car donation to charity on behalf of the National Veterans Services Fund (NVSF).

Jeff had some friends that were veterans and he’d seen how war could affect a whole family. He also explained to us that one of his buddies had a child with a serious medical condition, and that the NVSF was the only organization that offered them the help they needed. So, with that in mind we got rolling with the advertising for our November - Honor our Local Veterans Sale.

To us, the win-win scenario was three-fold. We could offer the people who brought in trades a substantial credit towards the purchase of one of our brand new arrivals, the car donation would be eligible for a tax-deductible benefit as a charitable donation and veterans and their families were getting the much needed help they deserved.

In our state alone there are well over a million war veterans. The excitement over the promotion was so great and heart-warming that I challenged the other car dealers in the city to join in cause.

The success of our charitable car donation give away was better than anyone could have imagined. We raised thousands of dollars for a great cause and people were happy to donate.

All the details for the car donation program were handled by Easy Donate a Car, the car donation processing service. The information and car donation guidelines that they provided were so helpful, and they made all the arrangements for picking up the vehicles.

Easy Donate a Car lived up to their name. They made the process of donating a car to charity so easy, and we feel that the National Veterans Services Fund is such a great charity that we’re planning similar program for next year.

Percy G.