This is not an abusive violation of the rules or possibly not even a violation at all. The friend is willing to give you the award. That's ok. The fact that you try to convince him to fly a certain big name airline (the small name carrier has no FF program) and even helped pay for part of the ticket doesn't matter.

How about parents who pay for their college kids' airplane tickets. Sometime in the future, the child is generous and says "Thanks Mom and Dad for supporting me throughout college, here's a ticket to Hawaii". That's legal and not at all abusive even though the parents paid for many tickets.