Car Donation Stories
Has your car been anywhere special? Has anything unusual happened to it? We want to hear the story behind your car! Be sure to include the year, make and model of your vehicle, a photo, when you donated it to the National Kidney Foundation, and, of course, YOUR STORY!
The 1993 Toyota Forerunner was a gift from a pediatrician who commuted around 120 miles a day from her home in the country to her job at a hospital in the city. The truck already had over 100,000 miles on it in 1998, but the motor was still under warranty. The donor was about to get a new car when the truck's engine blew. She felt the best overall win was for her to get a tax deduction for the truck, tell the National Kidney Foundation about the warranty and get a new car. The foundation contacted a well-known local Toyota dealer about the repairs. The dealer replaced the engine and did the labor for free and asked the foundation to write a letter and some press releases to be used toward his submission for Toyota's "Presidential Award." Our submissions helped him win the award for the third year in a row and his story was featured in a Toyota ad in People magazine in July of that year. Both the National Kidney Foundation and the Toyota dealer received positive publicity and sold the truck for approximately $10,000.
