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?
I don’t have any UA miles…but I have some AA miles to donate. Is there a similar organization that would like to accept some AAdvantage Miles for similar purposes?