Small Scale, Huge Impact with Toyota’s 100 Cars for Good

Toyota’s 100 Cars for Good campaign is already off and running.  You may have noticed the name as a sponsored trend on Twitter last week.  I hadn’t even heard of this program before then, but I’m excited to bring it to your attention now that I have.  In essence, Toyota is giving away one car a day for 100 days to a worthy non-profit organization.  The 500 NPO’s included in the program were selected from applicants and placed into groups of five to be voted on by the public—one voting block goes live each day, and the winning organization receives a new vehicle donated by Toyota.

What is most engaging about this program is the types of organizations represented.  These are not large-scale charities, but local organization with volunteers often numbering in the tens or maybe even less.  These are groups whose work might only affect a small area, but can affect it dramatically—groups for whom a new vehicle can make a tremendous difference in expansion versus static (AKA non-) growth, success versus failure. 

On that kind of organizational scale, a new vehicle that will be dedicated to their work is the chance to go to the next level, either because it eases the stress on volunteers who heretofore had been using their own vehicles, or if they can get a specially outfitted vehicle then they can tackle work they were not physically able to do with a normal car.

The voting is based on a Facebook app (which you do have to give permission to), but other than signing through the interface is easy to use.  It allows you to sort by topic, location, name, or voting day.

I spent some time looking through the list of charities and was surprised at the number of local NOLA organizations that I hadn’t even heard about, which is no doubt half the point.  As wonderful as it would be for some of these community groups to get a new car for shuttling disadvantaged kids around or hauling rescued animals or taking constructions supplies to home (re)building sites, there has to be some appeal to the publicity in a program like this, the chance to expand the local awareness of what they’re doing. 

Each of the charities also contributed a 2-minute video explaining their mission.  Some of them—okay, a lot of them—are drily inspiring, stories of good works and need, but some of them are more close-focused and play like a short documentary about one specific person who was helped by this charity, and others manage to be humorous in their information-drop. 

If you go to vote, be democratic and listen to the other organizations voting the same day as the one you think you want to vote for.  They may not change your mind, but it will make you sure your vote went to the right place.  You can also vote every day—it’s not like if you vote once you’re done for the duration of the program—because each day a different set of charities are competing for that car of the 100 being given away. 

This is a really easy way to get involved in making a difference for a community group.  As I mentioned, these are not large-scale organizations where 80% of every dollar donated goes to overhead or anything like that.  They’re small, locally oriented and locally run networks.  A new set of wheels to be dedicated to their service would be a big deal to them—that’s why they took the time to apply for this program. 

Best of all, there really are so many of them that you’re guaranteed to find one that aligns with whatever soft spots you have.  You can find a group in your area, and keep it local.  Or you can find an animal rescue, if your exploitable emotions come up during those heartrending Sarah McLaughlin SPCA commercials that I can’t even watch because I just want to go adopt all the animals at my local shelter when I see them, or a kids’ center, or a learning center on some aspect of the natural world that is especially dear to you, or a homeless outreach or a food program or…well, pretty much anything.  500 options provides a lot of variety.

You can find out more about the program and check out the charities at http://apps.facebook.com/carsforgood/.  The voting is happening now and runs every day through August 16.  And if you go look and find only one or two charities that you feel moved to support, you can sign up to be emailed a reminder the day they are up.  So what are you waiting for?  Go check it out!

100CarsForGood

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