woman read book

Other Ways to Help Us

National Vehicle Donation Program to benefit Hands Across the Water 

Give your old and unwanted motor vehicle as a tax deductible donation to our charity by calling our charity’s vehicle donations center at 1-800-939-3235 your call will be taken between 8:30 a.m. and 8:00 p.m. EST, Monday through Friday. Donating your vehicle on-line with be much quicker and more efficient, and we thank you for that. 

Program Benefits 

  • Free pickup and Free towing nation wide, fully licensed and insured 
  • Maximizes the value of your donation to HANDS ACROSS THE WATER. 
  • Your donation may be tax deductible. (the applicable IRS definition can be found in IRS Publication 526.) 
  • A quick and easy way of disposing of vehicles which are no longer needed. 
  • All types of vehicles accepted including autos, boats/yachts, trucks, sport utilities, motor homes, airplanes.) 
  • Donate on-line 24 hours a day.

Make a tax deductible charitable funding contribution by sending a check payable to Hands Across the Water 

Advocate in your hometown to get a surplus book collection program established. Press for the placement of one of our surplus book collection containers at any convenient location in your hometown – ideally at your municipal recycling center, but if you do not have one, then at the grounds of your municipal Department of Public Works or Highway department or in the parking lot of any school or even the public library parking lot or in the parking lot or yard of your house of worship. Alternatively the container could be situated in the parking lot of any local civic club or house of worship or even in the parking lot of a local business which might be willing to host it. The outdoor book collection containers, which we provide at no charge, are 20 feet long by 8 feet high by 8 feet wide and are sturdy weatherproof metal storage containers. They take up about as much room as a van. 

How you can help

All contributions you make are tax deductible whether you contribute books to help fill our existing collection receptacles or whether you make a monetary or used car donation to help us acquire more collection receptacles or to ship our books to needy areas globally. Why give your charitable donations to already well endowed schools and foundations which merely “study” issues of Third World destitution and illiteracy or merely analyze the recycling problems of our American society or the global imbalance of educational resources when you can give to an active humanitarian charity like Hands Across the Water which is addressing both issues and doing so on a massive scale by sending books to the needy not by the mail bagful but by the container load ? This is a no frills, direct service charity. All donations are applied to the collection and distribution of books at no charge to the needy with NO diversions for salary for any of our workers. Our charity is run by volunteers who donate their services at no charge and we keep our overhead low. 

How we operate 

HATW delivers an effective solution to two problems, the domestic problem of excess books and the overseas problem of not enough books. We collect books from donating local schools and libraries which are excess to their needs, and send the books over to schools and libraries both in the USA and overseas which desperately need and want them. The books we are collecting for reuse in needy societies are of good quality. Over the past five years of our charity’s operation we have provided more than five million books to needy areas ranging from Haiti, Ghana, Kenya, The Gambia, Tanzania, and other countries in Africa, to the newly independent states of the former USSR (Russia, Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia) and to the Philippines. We have also provided books to poor areas here in the United States.