Caring Causes: Donating Timeshares

Media outlets nationwide regularly warn how difficult and dangerous it is to sell a timeshare. In fact, the Better Business Bureau recently listed the timeshare resale market as one of the top ten scams in the country. But you do have another option - Donate for a Cause. When timeshare owners donate their unwanted property, they get a significant tax receipt and help some great charities in the process, like the American Cancer Society. I recently had a chance to interview Brent Maggio, treasurer of Donate for a Cause, which has raised more than $3 million for charity in the last 10 years.

1)   What are some of the common frustrations with timeshare?

While many timeshare owners often experience difficulty booking the weeks they want, by and large the greatest frustration among them is the ever-increasing annual maintenance fees, which are legally binding and must be paid as part of timeshare ownership.  At first affordable, these fees typically climb to many hundreds, even thousands of dollars a year.  They escalate for a variety of reasons such as management companies that overcharge or do a poor job of replacing former owners with new ones. But perhaps the most common reason prices rise is because of so-called “rescue companies” that charge people to take their timeshare and then deed ownership of the properties into phony corporations.  When the fake corporations fail, as they were always meant to, the timeshares go into mass foreclosure, driving maintenance fees up for all remaining owners.

2) What are the advantages to a timeshare owner of donating it?

Donors get a nice tax deduction, permanently end all maintenance fees and special assessments, contribute to a charity they care about, and avoid the scams that are so prevalent in the resale market. (For instance, as soon as you list a timeshare on the resale market, you start getting cold called by conmen--and many people fall for this). In short, the donation process is one of the most painless and lucrative ways to get rid of your timeshare in today’s market.

  

3) What types of charities can use a timeshare donation?

Because of the incredible financial liability (including mandatory annual maintenance fees) that come with timeshare ownership, almost no charity except Donate for a Cause can use a straightforward timeshare donation. All charities, however, can use, and love, the funds generated by timeshare sales.  Donate for a Cause is a grant giving charity that has the experience and means to take timeshares on donation, convert them to cash and grant the money to other charities.  Donors are welcome to suggest the recipient of their choice, all registered 501(c)(3) organizations are eligible.  Or, if they don’t care, it will go into a general fund that’s divided among all of DFC’s partner charities, including American Cancer Society, National Foundation for Cancer Research, Feed the Children, and more of the nation’s most beloved causes that are summarized on our website/

 

4) How do charities use the donation?

Donate for a Cause liquidates the timeshares and provides monetary grants to the other charities that use the funds to further their specific causes.