August 8, 2011; Source: Philadelphia Inquirer | With the approval of the Pennsylvania Attorney General, PhillyCarShare was bought by Enterprise Holdings, the national auto rental mogul. The nonprofit which has 13,000 members had developed a good deal of tax liability accumulated through its failure to charge members a $2 car rental tax on some types of transactions. This resulted in a $2.7 million debt for back taxes and penalties. This was not its only problem and Jacob Smith o the Phillycarshare board of directors commented “What the board saw going forward was competition and financial issues. We wanted to do things we couldn’t,” so seeing a shared vision with Enterprise which runs We-Car, its own car share subsidiary, it decided to throw in the towel. Enterprise will assume all of the nonprofit’s assets and liabilities. Executive director, Gerald Fugione says nonprofits had led the way in the car-share industry, demonstrating that a market existed. –Ruth McCambridge
About The Author
Ruth is Editor in Chief of the Nonprofit Quarterly. Her background includes forty-five years of experience in nonprofits, primarily in organizations that mix grassroots community work with policy change. Beginning in the mid-1980s, Ruth spent a decade at the Boston Foundation, developing and implementing capacity building programs and advocating for grantmaking attention to constituent involvement.
