tptaceka day ago
I went back on Archive.org, and it does seem to be the case that they've been up front about their religious affiliation (online) at least since 2013, when I stopped looking.
The pitch K4K has had for most of this time isn't about the good that they do so much as that they're very good at picking up your car conveniently and maximizing the IRS impact of the donation.
(Donating your car is probably not a good deal and you might be better off just having it bought and picked up by a salvager, and then taking the money and donating that.)
dec0dedab0dea day ago
People donating things aren't generally looking for a good deal.
I don't really care about the religious aspect, but if you're calling yourself kars4kids, the proceeds really should go to kids. In general, charities should have to be more up front about how their donations are being used. With rules being stricter as they get bigger. That is to say, the local fire department doesn't need to tell me how much of the hoagie sale is going to beer, but once you're buying commercials there should be some transparency.
As far as car donation options the purple heart is still around. I think at one point either the EFF or the FSF used to do it too, but I can't find it anywhere. Does anyone remember that?
alsetmusic21 hours ago
> I don't really care about the religious aspect
I certainly do!
I'm a paying supporter of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, The Satanic Temple (it has nothing to do with satanism), and even the Friendly Atheist Podcast (which is just a podcast, unlike the first two). If I donated thinking I was helping families who couldn't get their kids to school or to after-school events and then found out that there was a religious org behind the commercials, I would be furious.
You can have and practice your religion. But bad actors have been using religion as an excuse for persecution and as a means of control in the USA for decades. I'm outraged to learn that they were manipulating people in this manner.
therealpygon5 hours ago
Wonder when the big flashy DOJ podium announcement about stopping this fraud of this religious based charity will be? Surely there will be massive news reports like the fraud of a daycare center in Minnesota, right? …Right??? Hey where did everyone go? What do you mean the DOJ isn’t even looking into this interstate fraud? Didn’t they just file charges against another charity for soliciting donations and then using the money differently? Weird.
tptaceka day ago
It does go to kids, it's just a religious charity for kids. That's an extremely normal thing. I'm Catholic, we have them too. And they're not hiding it.
I don't think it's a good donation! I wouldn't use it. Like I said, I'd junk the car and donate the proceeds.
nostrademonsa day ago
Did you ever hear the jingle? [1]
The main issue is that it's a bunch of kids (~5-8yo) singing "1-877 cars for kids, K-A-R-S Kars 4 Kids, 1-877-KARS-4-Kids, donate your car today". Given its resemblance to preschool-age kids songs, and that it was a bunch of very young kids singing it, and that it played incessantly over California radio stations, many people thought that it was a charity funding local underprivileged kids of preschool/school age, not gap years for 17-18 year old NYC and NJ residents in Israel. They were always up-front on the website about what it is (presumably how they avoid fraud charges), but how many people are going to check the website when they have the 877 number burned in their brain?
If you look at the lawsuits against them, they almost all fit that pattern: someone (often elderly) who heard the kids singing on the radio, had a junk car, and figured they'd go help some underprivileged kids. Sure, always read the fine print, but the judge listened to the jingle and agreed that it was pretty misleading. So did other judges in Pennsylvania and Oregon.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K8UV7SAhvG4&list=RDK8UV7SAhv...
skissane18 hours ago
> If you look at the lawsuits against them, they almost all fit that pattern: someone (often elderly) who heard the kids singing on the radio, had a junk car, and figured they'd go help some underprivileged kids.
If they shifted their operations a bit, they probably could technically answer this criticism, even if in a way which wouldn't satisfy the critics.
Ultra-Orthodox communities such as Lakewood, NJ, contain lots of large families with many children, many of which formally fall beneath the poverty line – even though they generally have a lot of informal social support available to them which isn't reflected in the official poverty statistics. If they adjusted their focus to helping elementary school-aged ultra-Orthodox children from less well-off families, they could call that "helping underprivileged kids" – and a judge would probably agree with them - even if it isn't what many of the donors are thinking of when they hear the phrase "underprivileged kids"
freejazz14 hours ago
Laughing that you'd call a judge a critic. It wasn't criticism, it was a judgment!
skissane13 hours ago
You are misinterpreting what I was saying. Critics and judges are two different groups.
My point was, if they changed their operations a bit, judges would find it much harder to rule against – but that change wouldn't satisfy most of the critics.
tyrea day ago
I think if you polled people donating, over 99.9% wouldn’t guess that it’s going to late-teens in a religious organization flying to Israel. I don’t even know that the 1/1000th person would guess.
You can’t hear the ads + see the billboards, compare it to where the money was going, and say in good faith that people thought that.
tw0417 hours ago
> It does go to kids, it's just a religious charity for kids.
The article literally contradicts your statement.
> Instead, Kars4Kids primarily funds a New Jersey-based Jewish organization, Oorah, which provides programs, including an adult matchmaking service, trips to Israel for teens and summer camps in New York, the judge wrote. The only program in California that Kars4Kids sponsored was a promotional giveaway of Kars4Kids-branded backpacks, she found.
I have listened to those commercials on the radio for a decade and never in a million years would I have guessed that’s where the donations are going.
autoexec19 hours ago
> It does go to kids, it's just a religious charity for kids.
What do kids need with an adult dating service?
"Kars4Kids sends about $45 million a year, 60 percent of the money it raises, to Oorah, its sister organization"..."Oorah, which provides programs, including an adult matchmaking service"
zeroonetwothree17 hours ago
Where do you think kids come from?
FireBeyond21 hours ago
> And they're not hiding it.
If you went online. But people know of them from radio and TV which absolutely do hide it.
pessimizera day ago
Just from personal experience, Catholics are better at this. Other religions often consider religious instruction a charitable function. Catholics just help you, and you're moved into wanting religious instruction.
When I would go to St. Vincent's as a homeless teenager, the only indication that I wasn't receiving services in some government office was the foot-high cross on the back wall. I don't remember a single mention of religion. Plenty of Protestant churches would make you sit through a service before feeding you.
edit: that's what I get for not reading the article before commenting. This is just fraudulent. It's a charity doing Zionist things for Jewish youth. Most non-Jewish people wouldn't donate to a kids' charity that wouldn't do a thing for their children if their children were needy. The only need it's attending to even in Jewish children is the "need" to love Israel and not enter into interfaith relationships.
aidenn0a day ago
Are you saying that Catholic charities are more catholic in who they help?
dhoseka day ago
Mostly. There are exceptions, like the Catholic adoption agencies wanting to discriminate against same sex couples in placements, but as far as using charity as a means to directly evangelize, I don’t think I’ve ever seen it. A big part of that is also just a cultural aspect of Catholicism—we tend not to be big on the reaching out to people to join the church and there’s a tendency among Catholics to view themselves as members of an exclusive club rather than a party that there’s always room to bring in more people (the late Andrew Greeley commented on this in his book, The Catholic Myth and during a recent project that had me visiting a number of Chicago churches over the last year and as part of that viewing a lot of parish websites to check for Mass times, the numbers of parishes that had any indication on how to become Catholic at all was minimal (the vast majority assumed that you knew what RCIA/OCIA meant and I think I saw maybe a half dozen parishes that had the words “how to become Catholic” somewhere on their home page, all of which were predominantly Black parishes. On the other end of the spectrum, there were a handful of parishes where it was a challenge just to find an address and list of Mass times anywhere on them).
aidenn0a day ago
> viewing a lot of parish websites to check for Mass times
How was your luck with that? I often find the website is terribly out-of-date in general, and if the times have changed since the last update...
Sometimes the website links to recent bulletins, which are almost never wrong. If there isn't then I call the office to check; most parish offices have a list of Mass times in their voice-mail message.
dhosek3 hours ago
Generally good. The one case where it failed was for a Spanish Mass in a neighborhood targeted by ICE where the Mass began about half an hour after what the website said. Out of nearly 400 parishes in the archdiocese, only one parish¹ completely lacked a website and one’s online presence was a Facebook page which showed no updates for nearly two years. For added confusion, there is a pair of parishes which share a single website and the clergy preside at Masses at any of the three (formerly four) worship sites.³
I was (the project concludes on Friday) visiting churches on their patronal feasts⁴ and whenever bulletins were available, I would check them to see if there was any deviation from their published schedule because of the patronal feast. Life frequently intervened to make me miss a number of Masses that I would otherwise have attended, not to mention that a number of parishes didn’t have any Mass at all on their patronal feasts, but it’s still ended up being a lot of church visits.
⸻
1. The Renew My Church reorganization of the diocese has resulted in the number of parishes being less than the number of actual churches with a significant number of parishes having two or more worship sites. Some parishes have a new name for the combined entity with the individual churches retaining their name (e.g., Queen of Apostles Parish has two churches: Queen of Angels and St Matthias) while others just name themselves with the two constituent churches (e.g., St Luke/St Bernardine).²
2. One such parish near me had a previously consolidated parish, St Catherine/St Lucy (which only had a single church after consolidation) and became St Catherine/St Lucy and St Giles) until operations costs led to the closing of the St Catherine/St Lucy church building (the school remains open) and while the parish retains the long name, I don’t think anyone other than official documents calls it anything other than St Giles.
3. That being the St Catherine/St Lucy and St Giles of the previous footnote and the other parish in Oak Park, Ascension and St Edmund.
4. https://www.dahosek.com/category/catholic-nerd-pilgrimage/
ofcrplsa day ago
In the US, possibly yes. That’s not been their predilection elsewhere.
tptaceka day ago
That is not all this charity --- I'm sure it's not an especially efficient charity --- does.
bigyabai21 hours ago
The vast minority goes to kids, by the sound of it:
Ms. Landau testified that Kars4Kids sends about $45 million a year, 60 percent of the money it raises, to Oorah, its sister organization, which operates out of the same office building in Lakewood, the judge said. Another 30 percent is spent on in-house advertising, and about 6 percent on administrative costs. Oorah has also spent money overseas, the judge wrote, including $16.5 million to buy a building in Israel.bombcar21 hours ago
Tons of car donation options exist (I just linked https://www.catholiccharitiesusa.org/ways-to-give/donate-a-v... elsewhere) - but the big IRS loophole was closed (before the charity could just give you a bullshit receipt for the "value" of the car, anything remotely justifiable, now they have to either claim they put it into service of the charity, or give you the value of what they got for it and almost universally these cars go straight to auctions and fetch not much (and many are bought by junkyards).
goldfishgold15 hours ago
I disagree that even on their website they’re forthright about what they do with the money. Look at it.
https://www.kars4kidsprograms.org/
=== We empower kids to be great. Kars4Kids provides the foundation kids need for successful, happy and meaningful lives.
…
We’re a national Jewish nonprofit providing mentorship, educational support and nurturing year-round environments together with our sister charity Oorah. Whether it’s tailored care from staff in summer camp, the safe haven of afterschool groups, or a mentor's listening ear, we provide the support youth need to thrive. ===
Sure, they use the word Jewish, but they carefully chose language that suggests a) the money goes to a wide range of underprivileged children, not just Jewish children and b) that their programs are traditional support programs, not trips to Israel.
SoftTalkera day ago
That was back in the days when if you had mortgage interest, it was to your advantage to itemize deductions and include charitable donations. With the much higher standard deductions now, far fewer people file a Schedule A.
dhoseka day ago
There’s also the cap on the deductibility of local taxes. The Trump tax “cut” raised my tax rate by roughly 3% (although I’ve tended to have lots of fluctuations in my income and deductions over the last 15 years so it’s hard to make good comparisons from one year to the next).
StanislavPetrova day ago
>and it does seem to be the case that they've been up front about their religious affiliation (online) at least since 2013, when I stopped looking.
If they were only soliciting funds on their website, which made it clear that your donation was being used to send 17 and 18 year olds to Israel, that would be a different story. In reality, the vast majority of their donations come in from people who are totally unaware because they hear the radio jingle, which is sung by little kids, and makes no mention of their religious affiliation or their affiliation with a foreign country. Here in New York I've been hearing these radio ads on a daily basis for literally decades and had no inkling about the true nature of this "charity" until today.
FireBeyond20 hours ago
And courts in multiple states now have ruled that their advertising is fundamentally misleading, so this whole "well they've always been upfront" is clearly not undisputed.
ceejayoza day ago
I didn't realize this was an actual company; I only know of it from The Good Place.
MBCooka day ago
I knew they were real, but only from people bringing them up as an example of a horrible obnoxious commercial.
I guess they were regional and never in the Midwestern areas I’ve lived in.
autoexec19 hours ago
It's the same with the "apply directly to forehead" commercial. I've seen so many complaints and references that I almost feel left out. I pulled it up on youtube once just to see what all the fuss was about, but I guess it just isn't the same when it's not repeated 10 times during a 20 minute episode of television at a volume that's loud enough to make you reach for your remote.
MBCook18 hours ago
That one I think I was lucky enough (ahem) to have in my area for a very short while.
However I do remember people complaining about it much later online and wondering why they were talking about something so old. I guess it plastered longer in other areas.
diebeforei485a day ago
Hopefully I never have to hear their annoying song ever again.
qingcharles3 hours ago
They just remade the entire song :(
tanseydavida day ago
"ok OK! I'll give you my car -- just make that song STOP!"
dhoseka day ago
It was used to great effect in one episode of The Good Place.
incompletea day ago
they'll just need to change the jingle to be something like:
one eight hundred cars for kids, for east coast kids to fly to israel on your dime!
also, praise be <diety> that these jingles will soon be off the air.
akatechisa day ago
Jokes on us, the "east coast kids" already fly to israel on our dime...
[deleted]a day agocollapsed
saltyoldmana day ago
> The ads with a repetitive jingle encouraging people to donate cars do not disclose that most of the proceeds go to a Jewish organization in New Jersey, the judge ruled.
It reminds me of when they did this giant fundraiser for the palisades fire and all the money went to NGOs that didn't do ANYTHING for the fire victims.
lern_too_spela day ago
Most of the grantees were obviously doing things for fire victims. Some of them were not obviously doing things for fire victims. Those have been described here: https://assets1.cbsnewsstatic.com/hub/cms/prod_cms_alt/file/...
robotnikmana day ago
I can still hear the old TV commercial in my head... 1 877 kars4kids...
el_benhameena day ago
Still plays on the radio. I can recognize it within the first two bars and have nearly punched a hole in my dashboard trying to turn it off.
aranchelka day ago
The fact that the organization is Jewish is stated prominently in the article, but I’m not entirely sure why that’s relevant. Many charities in the US have religious affiliations.
The adult matchmaking etc, that deviates substantially from their advertising.
MichaelDickensa day ago
It's relevant because the fact that it's religious organization was an important fact in the judge's ruling. From the article:
> If Kars4Kids resumes advertising, [Judge Apkarian] wrote, its ads must contain “an express, audible disclosure of its religious affiliation and the geographic location of its primary beneficiaries and the age of the beneficiaries, specifying whether they aim for children or families, or both.”
aranchelka day ago
Having to audibly name the religion/ethnicity of beneficiaries of charities is a pretty wild requirement for a US charity.
That may have been the judge’s framing, but it seems off from what I typically expect from mainstream US news.
futter9a day ago
It's not at all wild if the charity presents itself as non-discriminatory (ostensibly to deceive "outsiders" into misguided donations) while specifically benefiting the ethno-religious group of its administration.
It's clearly deceptive and exploitative.
EdwardDiegoa day ago
It would depend on what the precise federal/state law regulating charities is - it sounds, to me, (I'm a Kiwi, but heard one of their ads on the radio today in an Uber in SF) like they need to be more specific about what charity they're raising money for - the after just said "for charity".
I'm sure you'd agree that if I was advertising in the name of kids to raise money for a charity, and it happened to be that the particular charity I was raising money for had determines it should give Hamas money to help those kids, that potential donors would prefer to know where exactly their money was going to.
[deleted]a day agocollapsed
suburban_strike21 hours ago
[dead]
zeroonetwothree17 hours ago
The religious disclosure requirement feels like it may be a 1st amendment violation. Also perhaps even the rest of it as “compelled speech” (why does the judge decide how they fix their ads?) is it typical for charities to disclose exactly how they use their funds in ads? I don’t think I’ve ever seen that.
I agree the ads shouldn’t be misleading of course.
Next you’ll tell me that UNICEF isn’t exclusively saving starving orphans in Africa.
fn-motea day ago
To clarify the last sentence: the article says:
> Kars4Kids primarily funds a New Jersey-based Jewish organization, Oorah, which provides programs, including an adult matchmaking service, trips to Israel for teens and summer camps in New York, the judge wrote. The only program in California that Kars4Kids sponsored was a promotional giveaway of Kars4Kids-branded backpacks, she found.
MBCooka day ago
It’s still not relevant.
The charity is giving almost no money to kids. Thats the relevant part.
Doesn’t matter if it Catholic, Jewish, Scientologist, or Zoroastrian.
The law wasn’t faith based. The decision wasn’t faith based.
So why does the faith matter?
Ukva day ago
Both "giving almost no money to kids" and that the recipients (mostly adults) it did benefit were "based on religious affiliation" seem fairly surprising to me. If I donated a car, I would feel mislead by both.
bombcar21 hours ago
Normally if you're donating to something like Catholic Charities, you kind of have a bit of a hint what they do (though AFAIK they don't specifically target only Catholics) https://www.catholiccharitiesusa.org/ways-to-give/donate-a-v...
[deleted]a day agocollapsed
Brian_K_Whitea day ago
The identity and entity matters. It's not a random group who did a random thing for a random reason, it's a specific group who did a thing for a specific reason.
No one else made them behave in the way that got them called out. There is no religious persecution going on here. It's not a case of "But why does it matter he's black?". The act was specifically performd by a religious group, specifically for the benefit of that religious group only, under false pretenses of being neutral.
The people you are implying are being prejudged, are in fact the ones who commited the prejudice and discrimination.
kylehotchkiss21 hours ago
... 1-800-kars-for-scientologist-kids, donate your kar today ...
I mean if they promise to write your car was worth 50% more than KBB, maybe???
nubg18 hours ago
Look up "Epstein".
ande-mnoca day ago
> I'm not entirely sure why that's relevant
Because they are funding young people to visit Israel and this gives it context.
MBCooka day ago
Why does Israel matter?
All that matters is very little money is going to the stated goal of helping poor kids.
Religious angles of what they’re doing instead doesn’t seem to have mattered in the ruling.
ande-mnoca day ago
It’s a factual statement on how they misused the funds.
Please just state directly why you find the inclusion objectionable.
booleandilemmaa day ago
Because it's not obvious at all from their commercials, and that's how most people come to know about this shady org.
In CharityWatch’s view, the Kars4Kids ads deceive potential donors by failing to inform them that donated cars will benefit a Jewish organization and kids of Jewish faith. Furthermore, the youth programs Kars4Kids supports promote an Orthodox Jewish lifestyle, which CharityWatch believes compounds the deception perpetrated by the Kars4Kids ads
https://blog.charitywatch.org/costly-and-continuous-kars4kid...
tptacek3 hours ago
I'm not sure I understand why it matters which precise flavor of Judaism a charity supports?
moatea day ago
Let's assume the charity was Catholic and didn't inform people: do you think that wouldn't be mentioned? What about Muslim, Hindu, Satanic?
People have very strong feelings about their money going to religious organizations, especially if the organization doesn't state that they're religious in nature.
Let's do this: What are you implying? Because it seems that you're implying special treatment because this organization is Jewish, and that's not likely the case here in most people's eyes, but explain why you might think that is if that's what you believe.
qwertyuiop_21 hours ago
Years ago, I was moving and I couldn't take a car worth $5000 with me. It was too much of a hassle. I thought of donating and the first thing that came to my mind was "Cars for Kids" because it was embedded in my mind from years of listening to their ads blasted constantly on radio. The donation was easy, they came and towed it away. I felt good thinking I was helping the local kids. A year later, I happened to look them up and felt absolutely cheated.
zeroonetwothree17 hours ago
I’ve donated cars to them twice and I’ll be honest I don’t really care. It was convenient for me to not have to deal with selling it and I got a minor tax benefit.
I guess if I knew I might have picked a different charity though. But it’s not something I’d spend a lot of time worrying about.
[deleted]a day agocollapsed
carlosjobim20 hours ago
All charities are scams, that's how things have been since the time of Moses.
imglorpa day ago
davsti4a day ago
Thanks for that link.
Its disappointing that when I go to nytimes now, the only HTML delivered is this: <html lang="en"> <head> <title>nytimes.com</title> <style>#cmsg{animation: A 1.5s;}@keyframes A{0%{opacity:0;}99%{opacity:0;}100%{opacity:1;}} </style> </head> <body style="margin:0"> <p id="cmsg">Please enable JS and disable any ad blocker</p> <script data-cfasync="false"> var dd='rt':'i','cid':'AHrlqAAAAAMAYl57GtItBLkAqF0sXA==','hsh':'499AE34129FA4E4FABC31582C3075D','b':2342411,'s':17439,'e':'0dea157ed708067f48ce0d08c7f23713666ae095714e7407aff1749b0c62909cb0558a3d8d1b2427045cad0fda5e06ee','qp':'','host':'geo.captcha-delivery.com','cookie':'hisUIu5NMcItx~Fvd3kG57mGOkaIgUYyUngfRyIhb6XE0N~XjhS58OOHEPPBtFncTBi11h89pGklYInh0kXQiMHeNs5Ck~KD9lhBHxPD6kvHQn5MMeeL7qX_CDvAG2BG'}</script> <script data-cfasync="false" src="https://ct.captcha-delivery.com/i.js"></script> </body> </html>
I wonder what Sir Tim Berners-Lee would have to say about that...
Quarondeaua day ago
I'm using a (Greasemonkey) userscript to automatically redirect
to:
Terr_a day ago
Recycling from yesterday's submit (55 points, 19 comments) [0]
_____
'Bout damn time.
Spoilers for The Good Place: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rFQHHor6mT8
I remember being delighted how the scene skewered an unexpected but very deserving target.
____
ChrisArchitecta day ago
iluvcommunism20 hours ago
[dead]
VoodooJuJua day ago
[dead]