Your spare points can buy someone time that money can’t. Give A Mile is a lean, volunteer‑driven nonprofit that converts donated frequent flyer miles into “flights of compassion,” reuniting families when every hour matters. Their mission statement is brutally simple: “The cost of a plane ticket should never be the reason someone dies alone.”
I’ve been helping out Give a Mile for several years. Their spring campaign ends on Sunday, June 22nd. And they’re still a couple hundred thousand miles off of their goal. Here’s why it matters:
- Shanna, Missoula → Kansas City – Stage‑4 lung cancer separated a father from the daughter who “could almost hear his booming laugh echoing through the valley.” One award ticket bought them a final bedside reunion.
- Savanna, San Diego → Traverse City – Give A Mile turned a cross‑country award into the chance for a daughter to hold her mother’s hand during her last lucid days.
- “Flight #1111” Kochi → Calgary – A marathon redemption moved an ailing father 8,000 miles so his Canadian family could say goodbye in person, not on FaceTime.
- Imelda, Manila → Calgary Six years and an ocean vanished overnight; two sisters got one final embrace.
Hundreds of similar cases sit in the queue right now. Each is fully vetted by medical professionals; the only bottleneck is points.
The operations team books the awards–often inside 24 hours. The passenger flies. No overhead. The entire points balance you donate is consumed on an actual itinerary. Your orphaned points, or excess balance will close the gap between a hospice bed and a final hug.
Donate or browse flight stories, you can turn your miles into moments that families who could never afford it will never forget.
Give a Mile is running especially low on United miles and has had to decline quite a few requests. It’s heartbreaking. Would you help out with a donation of United miles?
Done!
Great idea! I just donated.
Here’s what I don’t understand. This program has to involve the explicit permission and cooperation of the airlines, because normally you can’t just transfer miles to anyone you wish for free, and the charity’s booking patterns (millions of miles cycling through, to and from unrelated people) would appear like a miles broker, unless the airlines have actively vetted and green-lit this. So if the airlines can spend the time and effort to enact all the paperwork to approve this and implement exceptions to their fraud detection, why don’t they just pitch in (some of) the miles themselves and get awesome PR?
Thanks for this. The donation link at giveamile.org goes directly to United (or Air Canada if you prefer) to make the donation. UA also does this service for other charities. I checked and according to the giveamile.org website, the charity is a registered US 501c(3), so your donation can be tax deductible in the US if you itemize. Your deduction could be valued at the price that UA is selling miles at retail on the same date as the donation. So be sure to check that out price out and factor in any bonus promotions that UA is offering that day in order to come up with a true price per mile. So your miles could be worth @ 1.8 cents each (with today’s promotion) or 2.2 cents when there are no promotions. This could be tax advantageous depending on your circumstances. Otherwise the value of your donated miles would be impossible to determine. You wouldn’t know the value when you earned them or when you might redeem them.
If this works for you (and them), why not, but why on earth is this time-limited; if United (and all airlines, hotels, corporations with pseudo-currencies) actually cared, they’d do this 24/7.
@InLA — Since #45 mucked up SALT, few itemize as much as before, which was kinda a blow to charities, but, many still give, regardless of potential tax benefits, as they should, if they genuinely care about a reputable and worthy cause. This issue with many charities is that they siphon a lot of those donations to ‘administration’ which basically means to a CEO (of that entity). Likewise, what many super rich seem to be doing is ‘donating’ to their own ‘foundations’ which just become slush funds anyway. What happened to Rockefeller or Vanderbilt with libraries and universities, etc. *sigh*
Yes! Tell me how?
@1990: With Give A Mile, you aren’t donating money. Your donated miles have limited value and purpose. So the charity’s CEO can’t buy a car or build a mansion with your miles, unlike what a televangelist or megachurch pastor can do with your money.