Donate Miles to Charity?
 

My wife is chairing the annual charity auction for our public elementary school and I had the dumb idea of getting parents with miles to donate to a fund that could be exchanged for a trip somewhere. After searching a few airline sites it appears that they restrict giving to only a few charities that they have chosen. Has anyone else tried to set something like this up that could offer some advice? Also, does anyone know if the hotel programs work the same way? I searched at Starwood and Hilton but could not find anything on their pages. Thanks in advance for the advice.

I don't know of such a program anywhere. My wife did the same thing yours did. We donated domestic r/t awards to be used by the winner of a package that included the tickets and a stay in someone's vacation condo. Now that I think about this, and seeing other posts about the airlines prohibiting sales/auctions of miles/awards, does anyone have an opinion about whether the airlines frown on this type of activity?

I don't know that the airlines *frown* upon the donating, or giving of, your awards to someone else (at least within Delta, Northwest, and Southwest). I've done it lots of times with no questions, no problems.

I think what your difficulty is, is several people donating miles to be *combined* by someone for an award, correct? If so, I still don't think they'd frown upon it as long as no consideration whatsoever was given in return for the miles/points. However, like the other posters, I surely can't think of a mechanism that would allow one to do this. Sorry.

Call the a couple different airline's mileage plan offices or public relation offices directly and see if someone can help you out.

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Have a great day!!
~~Missy~~

Airlines do not have problems with GIVING awards away, just selling, trading, etc.

Here is link to Delta's site.

http://www.delta.com/skymiles/sm_pro...wish/index.jsp

I tried to get the information you are seeking a couple of months ago and got nowhere. I emailed several airlines and got no response. I also got no help from flyertalk. Maybe someone out there knows how to help but I haven't found them. Good luck.

I tried this several years ago with UA - combining various miles to reach award levels. United wrote a nice, but not very helpful letter saying that this could only be done with approved charities and sent me a list of approved charities. They did say that we were free to provide UA with appropriate information and ask to be included, but it seemed unlikely that our local group - although 501.c.3 status - could compete with the nationwide charities they listed, so we never tried.

Bruce