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Earn bonus miles when donating to Hurricane Harvey relief with various charities. There’s an offer from United for up to 5x per dollar and from American Airline for 10x per dollar.
United Offer
You can choose to direct your hurricane relief funds through Airlink, American Red Cross, Americares, Greater Houstan Community Foundation, or Operation USA.
- Get 250 United miles with a donation of $50 – $99
- Get 500 United miles with a donation of $100 – $249
- Get 1,000 United miles with donations $250 and higher
Valid between August 26, 2017 and September 15, 2017. One bonus per MileagePlus account. An aggregate of 3 million TOTAL MileagePlus bonus award miles are available for this program and will be given in connection with donations on a first-come, first-served basis.
United is also matching the first $200,000 in donations.
American Airlines Offer
The American Airlines bonus mile offer is for American Red Cross donations, and it’s not tied specifically to Hurricane Harvey. You can choose to support Hurricane Harvey, Disaster Relief, Where it Is Needed Most, or Your Local Red Cross.
- Get 10 AA miles per $1 donated (minimum $25 donation required)
Valid August 24, 2017 through September 24, 2017. Mileage will appear on mileage statements within 30 days of donations being made and must be made through the above website link.
Important:
If you itemize your taxes, please consider the tax implications of donating through these programs versus donating directly. As far as I can tell, the United program will not reduce any part of the donation on the receipt due to the miles earned (“Your contribution may be tax-deductible, consult your tax advisor“) but I can’t guarantee that. For the AA program, I don’t see any sort of terms, but in the past they’ve valued the miles at 3 cents each and reduced the tax-deductible portion accordingly. I don’t know if they are doing the same this time. Doesn’t seem to be an issue this time.
Also be sure to input your mileage account information so that you’ll get the credit.
Hat tip to Slickdeals
My miles finally showed up – 500 for having made $100 donation. Miles that I had lost because they expired were reinstated to my United account without my asking (the hurricane donation made it in two days before my miles were set to expire).
No miles showing in my United account yet
Donated using the link, via United, with hopes of keeping a few about-to-expire miles alive. Sadly I didn’t make the cutoff and my old miles expired. Bonus miles haven’t shown up yet, although if they ever do I’m going to request that my old miles be re-applied, since the donation was prior to their expiration (can’t hurt to ask).
Tried multiple times to donate to American using Amex cards, keep getting an error – needing to meet some minimum spend on AU cards, so would prefer to use those if possible. Tried various browsers, incognito, etc. Calling the number in the error goes to general Red Cross line, not anyone who can actually help. Anyone been successful getting an Amex donation to work on this site?
Thanks Jim. I’ll be donating thtu both AA & UA.
Don’t donate thru AA or UA with their rip off. Devalued and scam miles. AA and UA should donate from their own savings . They are fraud to collect from us to donate so they can say they are good company. I would certainly donate directly thru Red Cross or other trusted agency directly.
Good way to keep miles from expiring in multiple programs while simultaneously helping those in need. Thanks for the heads up!
Just want to mention – be careful where you donate in situations like this. There are already scam facebook pages, crowsource pages, links to fake sites, etc, etc to take advantage of the situation.
Also just going to throw this out there. From Wikipedia:
“CrowdRise is a for profit crowdfunding platform…”
Like the JJ Watts fundraise?
While I like my tax relief receipts, I wouldn’t miss a $25. I have already given to a non profit that I absolutely trust
Off the path, I watched an OAN segment with a gentleman with HK experience, who wasted no words to label the Red Cross as inefficient. Even so, if that’s where the warm food is after a cold, wet, unplanned, precarious boat ride, I would be grateful somebody gave.
The letter you get for the Red Cross donation via American does not reduce the tax-deductible portion. IE, I donated $25 and the letter says the donation is for $25.
Thanks, I’ll update