I volunteer for a small charity in Canada.
www.globalyouthnetwork.ca

A big part of what we do is sending small teams comprised of university students for the month of May to various regions of Central and South America, Northern Canada, USA, Eastern Europe, Africa and South Asia. While abroad, the teams participate in a variety of volunteer activities with locally based humanitarian organizations while learning about the culture and the social, political, economical and physical challenges faced by local residents.

After reading FlyerTalk for the last little while, I realize there's got to be better ways for us to get cheaper airfares AND collect FF points for our organization. This could drop the cost of the trips and put more money into relief & development projects. So I'm asking for some ideas from FlyTalkers.

For example, can an organization like ours collect the FF points of all the students we send out on trips? Most students don't belong to FF programs as this usually their first overseas trip. Even if a few join, what good will 8,000 points do in one person's account compared to aggregating all those points in our charities account.

Open to any and all ideas.

There must be something like corporate accounts because here in Germany many companies get the miles awarded instead of the employees. If the employees get the miles they need to be declared on their tax form. Probably the best is to get in contact with the airlines to ask them about it. Another way is to use a business credit card to pay for these flights to get extra miles. I know that American Express has a big rewards program but Visa and Master Card have probably something equal.

Most (if not airlines) have corporate accounts, which allow you to collect the miles as well as get a discounted tickets. However, I doubt if they will allow small charity to use those programs. There are spending expectation, and they are geared toward medium-large business.

You might also look at pre-paid accounts that several airlines have. In essence you buy upfront a "credit" on the airline that can be used latter on. I'm not sure though, what are the rules of who can use it, and if miles can be deposited to a central account.

You might want to look into how to become a charity that can have miles donated to them. Then have the students donate their miles back to the charity.

Check out the Atmosphair program on Air France Canada's website. This seems to fit the bill.

Welcome to FT!

American Airlines has the BusinessExtrAA program, in which a business earns credit for its employees' travel in addition to frequent flyer miles the employee can still earn personally. It's not exactly designed for situations like yours, but it might help. I think other airlines have similar programs.

More information online at http://www.businessextraa.com. (If you key this in or write it down instead of copying or clicking, note the double "a" on the end.)

That's my first choice. I checked out AirCanada's website for this program and I think our charity is just what they're looking to support. They support small, local grassroots charities. I wrote up a proposal to others in the charity on how we could do this. I think this could give us the biggest bang for our travel buck. <Crossing fingers this works>

The other ideas submitted so far are good and more likely to work. Thanks everybody, keep them coming.

BTW I love this place!

Seeing as you are based in Canada, you should investigate Air Canada's flight passes which is a pretty sophisticated version of the prepayment programs suggested by MD/DC above.

Doing some digging on United web site you might look at PerkPlus (http://www.united.com/page/middlepag...3,2953,00.html)

It is geared toward companies but it might worth to check whether they will be willing to extend it to Non-Profits.

I guess most other airlines have similar program.

And for Delta, take a look at their Skybonus program.

If you are going to look into miles for businesses programs, I list most of them on my website below in the Programs for Businesses section of my Other Programs I Like page. Contacting those programs, perhaps by telephone, might get you contacts to other programs within the airlines more appropriate for a charity.