donate.mileageplus.com – How to Use Miles & Points to Support Charity Online
How to Donate Miles & Points to Support Charity :
There are several innovative nonprofit organizations around the globe striving to make the world a better place. Many of these charities are dependent on donations from private individuals. If you want to support these charities and that cost you nothing, then you can donate your rewards points and miles to charity.
Let’s check out some of the best ways to donate your miles and rewards points, without spending the hard-earned money. We will explain to you how to donate miles to the charity, without spending your hard-earned money and other unique ways to do a good for no out of pocket cost.
Easiest: Dentate Miles Directly through the Loyalty Program:
Most loyalty programs have a feature build in. This allows you to directly support a variety of charities, with some low minimum pledges. For example, United Airlines gave you the change to donate as little as 500 miles to more than 40+ charities. The donation can be done directly through the loyalty program account.
It is basically the easiest method to support the charity with rewards points. But there is some downside to this program. The biggest downside of this program is that for many charities, the points or miles get converted to a cash donation and might not get the best rate always. For example, if you donate 10,000 miles, which might be the cash donation of $50 or $100. Whereas, you can redeem your miles for $150 for a flight. The worse thing about this program is that you may not have any idea about how much benefits your selected charity will receive from the donation.
So, it is a great option for the average person to donate air miles to charity. There is a minimum donation is required of 500 to 100 miles. So, this will be a great way to burn your miles before they get expires.
Airline Donation Pages:
United: donate.mileageplus.com
Alaska: www.alaskaair.com/content/mileage-plan/use-miles/share-gift-miles/donate-miles
JetBlue: trueblue.jetblue.com/web/trueblue/truegiving
American: www.aa.com/i18n/customer-service/about-us/let-good-take-flight/donate.jsp
Delta: www.delta.com/buygftxfer/displayDonateMiles.action
Hotel Donation Pages:
Marriott: www.marriott.com/marriott-rewards/use/buy-donate.mi
Best Western: www.bestwestern.com/content/best-western/en_US/rewards/redeem-awards.html?category=CHARITY
Hilton: www.bestwestern.com/content/best-western/en_US/rewards/redeem-awards.html?category=CHARITY
Credit Card Donation Pages:
Discover Cashback Bonus: www.discover.com/credit-cards/cashback-bonus/redeem-cashback.html#charities
Amex Membership Rewards: www.americanexpress.com/us/content/members-give.html
Support Ill Children: Wishes in Flight via Make a Wish
Make a Wish America is one of the largest charities which helps to make dreams come true. They basically help the children, who have diagnosed with creditable illnesses. They make the dream comes true of these children. Every year, they help to make tens of thousands of wishes comes true. It is granted that every 34 minutes, they full fill one average wish in the United States.
Make a Wish is a great place where your miles can help. People can donate airline miles to the Wishes in Flight program to help the dream come true. Your donated miles are directly used by the program to support wishes.
Right now, this program is currently associated with United, American Airlines, Southwest, and JetBlue, Delta. For this program is minimum donations range from 500 to 2,000 miles.
Resources:
Instructions: How to donate to Wishes in Flight
Minimum Donations: For United and JetBlue, a minimum donation of 500 miles; For Delta and American, a minimum donation of 1,000 miles; For SouthWest, a minimum donation of 2,000 miles.
Service Support Members: Hero Miles or Hotels for Heroes
Fisher House is one of the largest charities that run two important programs for military service members and their families. Hero Miles program helps the wounded and ill service members and their families with the no cost airline tickets. While Hotels for Heroes helps to house families near the medical facility during the treatment.
One of the unique things about this program is it directly uses the miles and hotel points. If you donate 1,000 miles, that will use to book a plane ticket for the deserving service members. With many other charities, your donated miles will be converted to cash and no used directly. So, it will represent a good option to get a lot of value out of your miles.
So, these two are very excellent programs and the good thing is that it is very easy to support them. The Hero Miles programs have a direct deposit with Alaska, American, Frontier, Delta, and United. If you have any miles in this program, then you can simply donate them to the Fisher House with a minimum of 500 to 1000.
Hotels for Heroes usually works in the same way. It also has a partnership with Best Western, American, Choice Hotels, Hilton, Choice Hotels, La Quinta Inns & Suites.
Minimum Donation: For United and American, the minimum 500 miles require; for other airlines, you can donate 1000 miles.
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Support Refugees: Miles4Migrants:
It is an innovative non-profit organization that can help to relocate the refugees. Using these donated miles, they fly out the refugees from unsafe areas and united them with their families. For example, a Syrian refugee, whose family is already settled in Europe, will not receive any cost plane ticket to Europe from Miles4Migrants.
Resources:
Minimum Miles: 10,000 BA Avios, 10,000 Ultimate Rewards, 15,000 for most other airline programs. Only for Aeroplan have to donate 1,000 miles.
Most Complicated: Redeem for Gift Cards
You can also redeem your rewards points for gift cards and then donate to the local charity. First, you should check if they would accept a gift card and ask what merchant would be most useful.
In some situations, this type of redemption can make sense. For instance, you might get $0.01 per AMEX MR points when you redeem for gift cards. Also, there are several hotel rewards programs, frequent flier programs, etc. that allow you to redeem for the gift card.
If you want to get more complicated, then simply sell your gift cards and donate the cash to the charity. Or, if you want, then you could use the gift cards for yourself, and simply donate the cash you would have spent on those purchases.
Resources:
Charities that accept gift cards: CharityChoice, Goodwill, GiftCards4Change.
Sell Gift Card for cash: CardCash, Raise, GiftCardGranny.
Conclusion:
The rewards point donating will be a very rewarding experience. Your helping to make a difference, without having to spend your own money.
Resources:
How to donate to Hotels for Heroes
