Thanksgiving coming; car giveaway poll

[fflo]

Well, I'm gonna be a straggler this year, for the first time. Will be spending Thanksgiving in some place call She-boy-gun. Yeah, it's a strange name, isn't it?

I've just found out that this calendar year, 2004, is the last for simple tax-deduction car donating---starting next year, cuzza something buried in the Giant Tax Breaks for Corporations bill, people will be generally be able to deduct less for their donated cars, and in many cases won't know until after the donation how much it will be worth. Charitable groups are pretty upset; asked what she thought about the new law, a spokesperson for Goodwill is quoted in this article in Motortrend as saying, "You mean how Congress is using the homeless and hungry to pay for corporate tax breaks?"

Anyway, I'm contemplating donating the Jeep instead of selling it as is or getting the steering fixed in order to sell it. Gotta do a little number-crunching first. If I do decide to donate it, to whom should the donation go?

[Poll #389853]

Whitman-Walker's a great clinic in DC (serving the GLBT community). SMYAL's a queer youth group. CORE is the long-time civil rights organization. WEAVE us "Women Escaping A Violent Environment"---cheesy acronym, but a national group of 25+ years now.

I nearly died of SIDS myself.

Comments

[groovesinorbit]

You put the wildlife one in for me, didn't you? Cool idea to donate the Jeep regardless of who you give it to. I still have hopes of turning ours into a psychedelic flower bed. This being VT and all, we are required to have an old car somewhere on the property (whenever we do buy again). This place has a bus and a car with a tree growing out of it.

[disclaimerwill.livejournal.com]

I echo all of PiJeanF's comments above. Great causes all, I'm sure, but I picked the wildlife one because given a choice, I always go with the animal-related charity.

Not sure about my answer

[vjsmom.livejournal.com]

I'd have probably gone with Whitman-Walker because I have always been a supporter of theirs, but their administrative costs were getting a pretty large percentage of the donation money the last time I checked. I would check that out with any of these organizations befaore I made a final decision, but for the poll, I went with CORE, only because I envision even more of our civil rights being taken away now that W feels he has a "mandate."

[atleastdefiant.livejournal.com]

Maybe WEAVE would actually give the jeep to a woman needing transport after escaping the violent environment. That sounds like the most direct good, to me.

[atleastdefiant.livejournal.com]

By the way, hope you have a good time in Sheboykin. That's a Groucho Marx-y town, like Kalamazoo, where the name sounds livelier than the place probably is. Unless I've got Sheboykin all wrong, which is possible.