In a recent podcast episode, “Rewarding Giving,” we discussed ways you can earn rewards for yourself while donating to others. For those who prefer to read rather than listen, or who could use a quick reference, I posted the ideas here in easy-to-read bullet points. Enjoy!
How to find the best charities
Each of these websites is dedicated to helping people find the most deserving charities…
Let others find the best charities
- GiveWell: Charity fund that assigns money to the highest-impact giving opportunities (i.e., you donate to GiveWell, and they allocate funds to charities according to how their research indicates the funds will do the most good).
Earn credit card rewards without passing along transaction fees to your favorite charity
- PayPal Giving Fund Fundraiser Hub
- You donate to your favorite charity through their hub
- PayPal covers all credit card transaction fees
- If your favorite charity isn’t listed, encourage them to sign up
- GiveWell is available through PayPal’s hub, so that’s an easy way to donate with a credit card and to let others find the best way to use your donation to do the most good.
Kiva microloans
- Make microloans with a credit card
- Paypal covers credit card transaction fees
- Usually, you earn 100% of your money back, or close to it
- You do NOT earn interest on these loans
- Loans are not considered charitable donations (so no tax benefit to you)
- See my post: “Kiva: Do good and increase credit card spend.”
Extra Rewards for Giving
Here are some current opportunities for earning rewards (beyond credit card rewards) when giving to charities:
- Stand up to cancer: Earn 10 bonus American Airlines miles (no Loyalty points) per dollar donated. CharityWatch gives Stand up to Cancer an A rating.
- Air France/KLM Flying Blue earn elite status by donating miles: Earn Experience Points (XP) for Miles donations to charity. Earn 1 XP for every 2,000 miles donated.
- Choose a charity here
- After choosing a charity, you’ll see the number of XP earned when you select the number of miles to donate.
Use the most rewarding credit card
- Earn huge rewards with a great new welcome bonus
- Use charitable giving to meet minimum spend requirements
- See: Best credit card offers
- Earn free nights, elite status, and other perks with big spend: Best Big Spend Bonuses
- More ideas: Best cards for everyday spend
Give Goods Instead of Cash
- Instacart Community Carts: Donate items directly to food banks in partnership with Feeding America®.
- Chewy gives back: Donate needed supplies to the animal shelter of your choice through Chewy’s website. Stack rewards:
- Find the best portal option before donating
- Chewy will send you a receipt showing your charitable donation for tax purposes
- For donations to humane societies, rather than sending money, you could order goods and use Amex Offers, Chase Offers & Citi Offers for Chewy, PetSmart & Petco, and stack them with shopping portal rewards.
- Use your premium card “coupons” to shop at Lululemon, Saks, Dell, etc., and donate the items you buy to a domestic violence shelter, local school, non-profit, etc.
Other Opportunities
- Giving Good gift cards: 3% of the gift card purchase price is given to the charity listed on the card. This is our affiliate link, but consider clicking through a portal in order to earn extra rewards for yourself.
- Donate points or miles: Most rewards programs allow you to donate points or miles to charity. Consider doing this with any points that you know you won’t use. Also, if you have many points near expiration due to inactivity, donating some of your points will usually reset the expiration dates on the rest.
- Marriott Choice Benefits: If you’ve earned 50 Night Marriott Choice Benefits, consider choosing an option to donate to charity if you don’t think you’ll benefit from any of the other choices.
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I’d love it if there were a way to donate (AMEX or other) business service credits to nonprofits or schools that use those services, like the quarterly Adobe or Indeed credits. Does anyone know of anything like that?
If you pay Ohio income tax you can get a 2025 tax *credit* for donating here, up to $750 for single filers and $1,500 for joint filers.
https://everychildeveryfamily.org/
I love the Stand up to Cancer / American giving opportunity but be warned those points don’t come automatically sometimes. I have given a few times in the past w/out too much effort (the points eventually came) but most recent giving took a lot of effort. I had the transaction on my credit card statement, and thankfully took a screen shot of the acknowledgement because the email acknowledgement never came…. I had to keep following up for months and had to go through at least 3 departments… it took a lot of time and effort, but the points (35K) finally hit. I would advise to take multiple screen shots and keep records for any possible follow up needed.
I often give online, and much of it goes to religious charities or to tithing to my local church. Sometimes you can pay the transaction fees on your end instead of the charity or church’s, so that is a good option, I think. I don’t give to charity to get cash back or points, but it can be helpful to meet sign-up bonuses or spending promos as low-hanging fruit along the way.
American Express (Members Give), Discover, and Citi ThankYou points can be given to charity through those programs. These also avoid the transaction fee overhead.
If looking for cash back instead of miles:
Bank of America Customized Cash Rewards, set to “Online Shopping”, codes PayPal Giving Fund for the category bonus so you can earn 5.25% cash back for giving if you have the top preferred rewards status.
Nice tip! I wonder if Kiva would also count as online shopping?
PayPal is usually a 5% Freedom category for December as well. So use your Chase freedom card to donate via the PayPal Giving Fund to your favorite charity.
Thank you for the discussion.
American usually seems to have a 10x offer for donations to the American Red Cross when major disasters hit. I like this one because you get a tax receipt for the entire gift. Apart from the benefit to you personally of the tax deduction, this means that it is AA itself giving you the miles in recognition of your gift – there is no element of a cost to the Red Cross. They get your whole gift.
If a charitable gift program through an airline includes your getting a receipt for less than the full amount you donate, this means its is the charity that gave you something of value. In other words the charity paid the airline for the miles, and it’s comparable to a buy-miles scheme. In that case you’d likely come out ahead, and the charity certainly would come out ahead, by your making a donation directly to the charity.
Here are a few other options I found when poking around.
Something similar to AA’s Stand Up To Cancer but for Alaska, United, or Delta:
https://www.nfcr.org/all-ways-to-give/fly-to-find-a-cure/ways-to-givefly-find-cure/
Southwest and Alaska let you earn miles or elite-qualifying miles for carbon offset programs:
https://www.southwest.com/carbon-offset-program/
https://alaskaair.chooose.today/eqm/
Chase Ink Business Premier card holders earn 2.5 UR (Ultimate Rewards) for each $ spent on every purchase of $5,000 or more. Unlike Chase UR points earned from other annual fee UR cards, these points cannot be transferred to travel partners or combined with UR points earned from other cards. In general, there is no better value to be had except cashing them in at 1 cent each.
An important exception to this is that the Ink Business Premier points balance can be used with “Pay Yourself Back” at 1.25 cents each for Select Charities. If you want to support a participating charity and your business routinely spends in larger increments, this can make the Ink Business Premier a 3.125% back everywhere card.
Participating Charities include the American Red Cross, Equal Justice Initiative, Feeding America, Habitat for Humanity, International Medical Corps (also aiding efforts in Ukraine), Leadership Conference Education Fund, NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, National Urban League, Thurgood Marshall College Fund, United Negro College Fund, United Way, and World Central Kitchen.
One additional thought regarding Air France. If someone is environmentally inclined, on cash tickets (not certain about award tickets), Air France affords a cash donation (as opposed to a points donation) towards reforestation and sustainable fuels. One roughly earns 1XP per 10 Euros. Cash amounts are determined per flight — it’s not open-ended. (This might be an attractive alternative even though Sky Team benefits are the weakest.)
Charitable giving is how I often meet sign up bonuses, so I’ve been wanting this exact post. A few things to add, though, regarding Chase bonuses for charity: Chase Freedom cards now have 5x earning for many charities. I choose IRC. Second, Ink cards and now Freedom let you pay with points at a rate of 1.25 cents/point. For me that’s a great use of points, as I don’t like Chase partners anyway and have too many points banked and collecting dust, so saving cash is key (especially with high interest rates).
Have you checked with a CPA on how this would be treated for tax purposes? I’d expect that the (prorated if other spend was breaking the SUB too) SUB would be considered a benefit received for the donation and thus reduce the amount of the donation claimed.
Under charitable shopping it might be worth mentioning that you can use shopping portals to donate while you shop. Allgives, shopraise, and goodshop are all basically charitable versions of rakuten, top cash back etc