with the whole tax and charity thing...

I belive that donating miles helps (would do it if I had several many hundred thou, etc. but I do not. So I donate $ when I can instead) but if you ever wanna try to convince any tax people on the WORTH of whatever you donated, try this:

If you go to book some award ticket, say 30k on DL to Hawaii and then you ask, "Hey Delta, how much would that ticket have cost me if I bought it instead of using miles?"

they tell you it is like $700 or something.
Then go to the site and set up an itinerary as if you were gonna buy one...

Then print that and show everything to the tax person.

I bet you could get the write off!
Worth a shot??