I’ve written about opportunities to do some good with your miles, and end of year and the holidays are a time when that becomes even more focal. We hoard miles for aspirational redemptions, but many of us don’t use them all. We have a lot in some accounts, or orphaned miles in others. But we can put them to work.
Give A Mile is a charity that uses donated miles to book flights of compassion for people trying to reach a loved one in hospice or critical care — because the cost of a plane ticket should never be the reason someone dies alone.
They’re asking for help to make 52 flights happen this holiday season – “52 final goodbyes.” Not a gala. Not a branding exercise. Just getting people onto planes when time is the scarcest thing they have left.
Most “donate your points” options are basically a black box where your miles are converted to cash at some miserable implied rate — and you’re never really sure whether your donation increased what the charity received, or just helped the airline reduce a balance sheet liability.
Give A Mile actually uses the miles to book tickets. And they do the unglamorous work: coordinating, verifying, and moving quickly. They’re volunteer-driven. And your miles go 100% to book flights, with no overhead (that’s covered by other donations).
They work with multiple currencies — but for U.S. domestic flights, United MileagePlus miles are particularly useful because they can be deployed quickly and across a large network, and Give A Mile is set up on United’s MileagePlus Miles on a Mission platform so your miles can be moved into their account and used.
Give A Mile’s site is full of real itineraries and real people. Here are two examples that show exactly what your miles turn into:
- “Father and Son Final Goodbye” Bismarck to San Francisco so someone could get to a father in hospice.
- “A Grandson’s Introduction, Right On Time” mother on a single income with a new baby, trying to reach her dying father so he could meet his only grandchild.
This isn’t abstract “awareness.” It’s a boarding pass. So if you’re sitting on a stash you won’t miss — or you’ve got a random balance you’ll never redeem well — this is the moment to convert it into something that matters.
Would you help me – and them – out and donate United miles to Give A Mile?
Umm, United (and any corporation) can just provide the free flights to bereaved families; they do not need to be like supermarkets asking us to donate a dollar to feed starving people… you have the food/planes, etc.
Oh, and there are totally more than just 52 people that need help. This is corporate virtue signaling. Worse. It’s taking credit for guilt-tripping your customers to give up some of their corporate pseudo-currency, just so that corporation can claim they ‘helped.’ I’m not buying it. Any of it. Bring out the pearls to clutch and the crocodile tears, y’all. Token P.R. B.S. The company should just offer the free flights. Period.