Donate for Cancer and Get 25 American Miles per Dollar

Contents

1 The Offer
2 The Fine Print
3 Our Verdict

The Offer

Donate to Stand Up to Cancer and get 25 American Airline miles per dollar donated
This offer is valid through April 15; afterward, standard offer of 10 miles per dollar will apply

The Fine Print

For charitable deduction purposes, each mile is valued at 3 cents per mile
Offer valid on contributions made online at SU2C.org/americanairlines
Minimum $25 donation required to get miles bonus
Mileage cap for a 12-month period is 600,000
Miles do not count toward elite-status qualification
Please allow up to eight weeks for the reward miles to be posted to your account

Our Verdict

At first glance, it sounds great as someone who had plans on donating for a good cause can get some bonus miles along the way. The disappointing part is the legal grind – they put a value of 3¢ per mile for charitable deduction purposes. I think this means that only 1/4 of your donation will be tax-deductible, e.g. if you donate $100, only $25 will be deductible. It might be better to just donate directly, depending on your tax bracket and how much you value the miles.

Use a credit card that earns bonus rewards on charity donations, such as Flexperks or USBank Cash+,

HT: milespoints on Reddit

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5 Comments

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Quasimodo (@guest_245041)

April 12, 2016 00:44

#245041

cancer foundations don’t need any more $$$ (And my mum died of it) for their treatments/drugs…they only distract us from the causes of cancer that already exist..

calwatch (@guest_245032)

April 12, 2016 00:19

#245032

It’s an absurd valuation based on Fair Market Value of the benefit received – http://www.hurwitassociates.com/l_qa_charitablecontributions.php#2

So if you were donating $8,000 for 200,000 miles, you can get the same number of miles purchased with cash for $3687.50, or 1.84 cents a mile. https://buymiles.aa.com/en/buygift Therefore, if you were going to go this route (I wouldn’t), I would keep documentation of how much to buy these miles on the open market at the time of the donation, and use that to justify your deduction, in the unlikely event of an audit.