Hi Randy -

I'm doing my end-of-year donations and I'd very much like to make a donation for relief to the disaster victims in SE Asia. Is a credit-card payment to Flyertalk Cares tax-deductible or do I need to donate directly to an organization like UNICEF or the Red Cross?

Thanks for the assistance!

I can answer that. We actually report your name directly to the Red Cross in a list, so feel free to count any donation as deductable since the Red Cross is a 501(c) organization. While you can actually go ahead and donate directly to any of these organizations, Visa, American Express, etc. always gets their processing fees so Red Crosss actually does not benefit your entire donation. We process your credit card, add back in any processing fees these companies chanrge and give 100 % of your intended donation to this organization.

Hope this helps.

I'm not a tax expert and I'm not an accountant. But I imagine that sending money intended for the Red Cross would be treated as a gift to the Red Cross, and Randy wouldn't be showing income on his books but rather revenue and a payable... for all intents and purposes you'd be making a gift to the Red Cross. I assume that would fly just fine.

(Although you may not have direct knowledge that Randy is forwarding the funds, and I do trust him completely on this, I assume you'd be similarly alright handing your brother $100 in cash and telling him to drop it in the collection plate for you. And you should be permitted to rely on that.)

Here's one rub though -- for any contribution of greater than $250 you need a receipt from the charity in order to claim the deduction on your taxes. So the Red Cross would need your name and address and they would have to send you the acknowledgement.

Randy, do you know if the Red Cross will be individually acknowledging folks who contribute? (Otherwise, if the deduction is a necessary component of a decision to make a gift, one might want to keep gift amounts under $250.)

And a big ^ to Randy for doing this, and for generously contributing the credit card processing fees out of his own pocket

Yes Gary, you are correct. We never show this as income and as noted, the entire amount of any donation goes directly to the Red Cross. It's exactly the same system we used in 2001 when starting the idea of FlyerTalk Cares and you or any member might remember that there was absolutely no problems. If I remember, we do get confirmation back from the Red Cross from the list of donors we attach and we are more than happy to provide copies to any member who donates. I think today, members who donate will get their response and confirmations for donations via email as the system kicks into gear.

Based on the amount we collect, the processing fees can get up (nearly 3 percent of the total) there since a lot of members love American Express and they are the most expensive, but the concept of FlyerTalk Cares does start at the top.

The stories from our own members of their survival in this tragedy is enough for me... but being able to help those we don't know personally has it's own rewards.

Wish this announcement were at the top of each forum
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/annou...ouncementid=53
I suspect there would be more donations.
O2K

I donated via Randy's link, but then I went to the Red Cross site where it looks like I donated to the wrong fund. If I intended my aid to go primarily to the tsunami victims, I think the fund for that is the "International Response Fund", yet the Flyertalk Cares link went to the "Disaster Relief Fund" - their site isn't exactly too clear on this but I get the impression the DRF is for domesic aid. Perhaps they move the money around in extreme circumstances.

I donated again via the red cross's own page to the IRF, because I wanted to cover both bases.

Randy, can you explain more about the DRF vs. IRF funds if you know? Also, was my donation via the Red Cross's own page lessened by some credit card fees?

Great effort. ^

I went to the Red Cross link for donating FF miles, which lists 4 airlines. I have miles on other airlines which I would gladly contribute. If you become aware of options for donating miles on other airlines to the relief effort, will you post links to those as well?

Thanks.

Same here. In particular, international carriers.

Do you have any information on how to donate TAP miles?

Our bad. We usued the template for FlyerTalk Cares from 2001 and you are correct, the text did list the Disaster Relief Fund. We have since updated the text on the announcement to go along with the copy we wrote and the headlines - this current effort is designated for the Indian Ocean area and that is the International Response Fund. So, any monies collected during the current drive are going to the International Response Fund which is currently serving the disaster in the Indian Ocean area. Thanks for the question. We'll change the other donation page for the name of the fund when the tech guys get in this morning, but i think the headlines and the copy reads OK.

As for donations directly to any charity. It is my understanding that when you donate to any charity - Red Cross or other - on a direct basis, that while you are able to count that as tax-deductible for the full amount, the charity actually does not receieve the fulkl amount. Obviously it varies whether you donate to the local chapter of a charity that may not get much of a break on the credit card processing fees or a smaller charity organization for the same reasons. Processing fees - not the labor involved, etc. - the amount that credot card companies chanrge any business to accept credit cards for payment can vary from nearly 2 percent to more than 4 percent, depending upon the type of business and volume of charges, etc. For many years these same credit card processing companies always charged more for online transactions because there was "no signature on file" and there was always the "threat" of a lot of charge-backs where credit card holders denied ever making the purchase online since the business/charity actually had to signature of the customer.

To make a long story short, when you donate to any charity using a credit card, the actual amount that the charity is able to use toward their efforts is 2-3 percent less because of these fees, though both methods (FlyerTalk or directly to the charity) are 100% tax-deductible. FlyerTalk is a community and we love to share and give as much as our members do which is why in 2001 we came upon this idea to acutally cover the processing fees so that 100 percent of what you give is usable by the charity.

We collect your donations and run them through our credit card payment system - we use Bank One if you are interested. We don't count these donations on our actual financial transactions. We then print out a list of the donors, their names, amounts, etc. and hand over to The Red Cross along with a certified check for 100% of the amounts pledged. A check has no processing fee so the Red Cross is actually able to count 100% of the donations toward their relief efforts. We fully realize that we are not getting that 100% from the credit card processor because of their fees, but that is our support toward caring and sharing in the FlyerTalk community. FlyerTalk actually doesn't even show up during the process of these donations to Red Cross since the list only contains the names and donor amounts of our members.

At the $12,000+ mark so far raised toward this effort, we're probably in the hole nearly $300, but we'll take that out of the ad revenue we raise as part of the funding of the FlyerTalk operation. We suspect and hope that amount will grow as we're very proud of this community.

Now, we understand that there are many different charities that work in this area and each member has their own personal choice. We simply don't have the manpower to track and manage the individual donation efforts that this would require - similar to why airlines don't have hundreds of charities they work with to donate your miles. We generally think that the Red Cross is an international group that is well-known and generally has a good reputation for their efforts. The interantional effort is important to us as we fully appreciate that FlyerTalk is not and can not be a U.S.-only concept.

We also chose to serve as the conduit for these efforts so that we could measure our community. Most other travel-related Web sites do not have these tyoes of effrots as we do and the ones that do, like Lonely Planet, simply have pass-through links directly to the Red Cross. That's simple and we may convert to that in the future, but it doesn't allow the community, like FlyerTalk, to measure and report the generosity of its community. We are extremely proud of FlyerTalk (we being you, I and thousands of others) and to have reaised $10,000 in just the first 24 hours is something we can all be proud of.

I hope this helps with your questions and thanks for your support of FlyerTalk and the concept of caring.

Good question. The idea of donating miles links was first put forth by Punki, so thanks to her. We have assigned our research guy - Patrick - to clcik through and contact various frequent flyer and other programs throughout the world to see what efforts they might be linking their program through for this disaster. Any that we find we will add additional links to and report in the TalkMail member newsletter.

Thanks for asking.

Care lets you donate Delta SkyMiles in multiples of 5,000:
http://www.careusa.org/donate/skymiles.asp
If you click on the link there you get a form to print and fill out, naming Care as the mileage beneficiary, and fax to Delta. They give you the fax number and make it very simple, but it's not exactly donating the miles online.

Can someone provide the link to the page which lists the airlines that allow mileage to be transferred for relief efforts? I haven't been successful searching via Google and don't remember where it was posted. Thanks.

http://www.webflyer.com/programs/notiflyer/#art_206

http://redcross.org/donate/donatemiles.html

Thanks, Gary. That answered the question I had today. But what I was looking for was the page that one of Randy's people put together with the list of each airline and whether or not miles could be transferred for these purposes. Is that still out there somewhere?