Very interesting. I would treat it like a rebate, first come first serve, but not advertised, especially if there is an expiration date. I met with our budget person about this and that was the option they preferred to do with rebates. I’m not sure about the tax implications for donations, but good you are checking. If I had a ton of points to give away and not first come first serve, I would run reports for the most spend and policy compliant department(s). Or low funded department that does good things for your community and/or non-profit work. You can propose these options to the decision makers. In my experience, the department that received the donation would say it belongs to them 😊.

We used points for students but it was a bit different. Before I came to Pitt, the University did not have agreements with the airlines but just earned points. When I joined and put agreements in place the University had an abundance of points to use before they expired. Travel Management partnered with the Study Abroad office to use the points to "sponsor" student airfare. Study Abroad was responsible for advising Travel Management what region they needed a voucher for and how many. They were also responsible for determining how the points were distributed to which students. My office strictly ordered the vouchers and provided those voucher numbers to our agency to book based off of Study Abroad's guidance.

We have received mileage donations to units or student groups. The donor's intent has been to use them for university business, usually to support academic or athletic travel activities such as attending conferences or events. If it was for personal use, we may decline as it wouldn't be appropriate for us to manage personal travel under our current policies.

The unit receiving the donation manages the Easybiz account with Alaska Airlines, where the mileage is stored, tracked and can be used for booking tickets. The department reports on the account activity annually. We are working to centralize management of Easybiz accounts, booking and reporting within our travel office under Business and Financial Services division.

We have had similar donor offers here, and when it comes to personal use we typically offer the credits to underserved student populations, more specifically for things like flying high school students and their families to campus for recruiting purposes. We typically do not manage the process, but instead put the donor in touch with the appropriate offices. You may also find use for these credits for things like emergency medical-related travel, student club travel, etc. There's always a need for this sort of thing it's just a matter of finding those campus recipients.

Thank you so much everyone - these responses have been incredibly helpful. Sabrina