Since early 2017, SIA’s KrisFlyer programme has partnered with Make-A-Wish Singapore to allow members to donate miles to charity, which can be a good option especially for those who would otherwise let their miles expire, an issue that has recently resurfaced after three years of COVID-19 validity extensions ended.
The Make-A-Wish donation option has been temporarily suspended, but if this was your strategy for some of your miles then don’t worry – a new charity partner has just been added.
KidSTART Singapore
KidSTART Singapore is a non-profit organization specialising in supporting children and pregnant mothers from low-income families in Singapore.
Their specialist team partners the government and the community to empower families with less resources to building strong foundations for their children aged under 6 years old, to help give them a good start in life.
The donated KrisFlyer miles will be used to redeem for flights and/or for activities and items via the programme’s non-airline partners, to enrich the experiences of beneficiaries from KidSTART Singapore.
“KidSTART Singapore is a non-profit organisation that specialises in child development. It aims to help young children and pregnant mothers from low-income families in Singapore by empowering families to build strong foundations for children and foster positive child development outcomes.”
Singapore Airlines
Here’s how donation of KrisFlyer miles to this worthy cause works:
- Visit this link on the Singapore Airlines website to make your donation. You’ll be asked to log on to your KrisFlyer account, then confirm your donation amount, which is immediate on processing.
- All members with a valid KrisFlyer membership account are eligible to donate their KrisFlyer miles, and a minimum of 1,000 KrisFlyer miles is required per donation
- A maximum of 100,000 KrisFlyer miles can be donated per transaction.
- If you wish to donate more than 100,000 miles, simply make multiple donation transactions. There is no upper donation limit per member.
- You can donate your miles to KidSTART Singapore regardless of your country of residence.
- Donated miles will not expire and remain available perpetually for the beneficiaries of KidSTART Singapore.
- Donation of miles is not applicable for tax deductions in Singapore. For members residing outside of Singapore, you’ll need to check with the relevant authorities in your country whether this is possible.
- KidSTART Singapore will not receive any personal information about donors.
Make-A-Wish Singapore has been KrisFlyer’s charity donation partner since February 2017, but it’s not clear whether the option will be restored. For the time being at least, only donations to KidSTART are possible.
If you don’t wish to part with any of your hard-earned KrisFlyer miles, but do want to help KidSTART, you can also consider making a cash donation.
An option for expiring miles
If your KrisFlyer miles are expiring soon, there are at least 15 things you can consider doing with them to extract maximum value, as we summarise at our dedicated page fully explaining the options available.
However, if you have at least 1,000 expiring KrisFlyer miles but are not interested in any of the listed options to extract some value from them and simply intend to let them expire, please don’t do that.
This KidSTART donation option is the perfect solution for you in this case.
Just because you didn’t get any use or value out of your miles, someone very deserving might well do.
(Cover Photo: Shutterstock)
If they have access to tpps availability and only book economy saver then it would be a good use of expiring miles, but as they have allowed themselves to redeem for Kris+ and other low value uses then that’s still the same as throwing your miles away.