Care is key.
Carter Myers Automotive & Giving Words
7 cars. 7 moms.
7 markets.
A reliable car is the difference between holding a job and losing one. Here is what happened when we set out to hand seven sets of keys to seven mothers in the communities we call home.
The problem
Transportation is not a small problem
For a family led by a single mother, a failed transmission is not an inconvenience. It is the thing that ends the job, the childcare arrangement, and the plan.
Giving Words exists for that exact moment. The Louisa, Virginia nonprofit comes alongside single mothers with car repairs, vehicle donations, financial education, and a community that stays after the car is fixed. They have helped more than 200 families.
We are a family company, four generations in, and the people who work here are owners. We have been looking after our neighbors in these communities for a hundred years. Giving Words started in a driveway. Together we reach families neither of us could on our own.
There was never a shortage of mothers who needed this. Giving Words has moms waiting in every one of these communities. Seven cars reached seven of them.
One commitment to the families in the communities we call home.
“That’s what attracted me to being in the automotive industry. It wasn’t the cars, it was the people’s lives that we could change.”
Liza Borches President & CEO, Carter Myers Automotive
How it works
A donated car is only the beginning
Giving Words does not hand over cars as they arrive. A donated vehicle gets brought up to full mechanical and safety standards first, because a car that is not dependable is not a gift. Only then does it go to a mother who needs it.
Much of that reconditioning happens in CMA service departments, where our own technicians put in the hours. Some vehicles have also been taken on by students in the automotive technology program at Louisa County High School, who learn the trade on a real car with real stakes.
It is the part of this that our associates felt most directly. Hundreds of them had a hand in it, and a car that leaves one of our bays for a family in need is a different kind of workday.
Where it happened
Seven Virginia communities
Six of them are markets where CMA associates live and work. The seventh is Louisa, where Giving Words is based.
About Giving Words
Giving Words is a Virginia nonprofit that helps single mothers move from crisis to stability through car repairs, vehicle donations, and ongoing support. Their partner network stretches every dollar into five to ten dollars of real-world value, which is why a small organization can change so many outcomes.
Why we do this
Care is not a campaign
CMA has been family- and employee-owned since 1924. Our associates are owners, and they choose the causes we back: food drives, bikes at the holidays, school supplies, pediatric cancer research. Giving Words fits because the problem it solves is the one we actually know how to solve.
Being an owner changes what giving back feels like. It stops being something the company does and becomes something you did.
“Instead of it being like, oh yeah, I work for a company that writes a check to support nonprofits, now it’s my company, my department, me. I helped make this happen.”
Liza Borches on the hundreds of CMA associates who got involved
Every CMA owner works toward the same mission, moving lives forward. Seven families are further along than they were, and that is the whole point.
How you can help
The list does not get shorter on its own
Every car Giving Words gifts started as a car somebody decided not to keep. A vehicle sitting unused in your driveway is the single most useful thing you can give them — more useful than almost any check.
What they need
Running and drivable, driven in the last two years, current inspection, no major engine or transmission trouble.
Where it goes
Drop-off locations in Louisa, Charlottesville, Staunton, Winchester, Lynchburg, Chesterfield and Williamsburg.
What you get
Because Giving Words gifts the car rather than auctioning it, donors can often claim its full fair market value.
More from CMA
Giving back is part of who we are
This was one initiative among many. See what else our associates are doing across our markets.
See more community initiatives