Harvard E. "Pete" Palmer Jr. is a prominent national authority on promotion and operation of car donation programs for charitable causes.
Five years later, the General Accounting Office interviewed Palmer regarding the federal regulatory legislation that became part of the Jobs Bill 2004.
Though that lobby disbanded in 2005, Palmer has helped bring together a new, politically oriented coalition of charities, call centers, auctions, and others to address difficulties associated with the car donation aspects of the Jobs Bill.
[1] In 2003, Palmer's organization joined with the National Auto Dealers Association ("NADA"), a major vehicle-information resource, to form a partnership that simplified what was previously a difficult auto-donation process.
[5][6] In 2009, Palmer and some charities lobbied against extension of the federal government's "Cash for Clunkers" program, which had hurt donations for charitable purposes.
A San Francisco Bay Area advertising executive since the early 1970s, he had a client who went out of the furniture business and started the vehicle donation program for Volunteers of America.
[8][9][10] In 1996, they began work with their first client, the Polly Klaas Foundation; today, Palmer gets eight to ten weekly inquiries from charities wanting his Vehicle Donation Processing Center, Inc., to operate one of these programs.
[8][9] Because of his philosophy that he is helping donors as well as charities, Palmer's organization, unlike others, accepts the great majority of them, "no matter how crummy that car might be," and even if the amount generated per vehicle is small.
)[1] Vehicles accepted include cars, trucks, boats, vans, RVs, trailers, motorcycles, and even airplanes and real estate.