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With Comic Relief coming up in just over a week, and raising money for some truly amazing causes, we thought it worth flagging a “hack” (in the loosest, most benign sense of the word) that enables you to effectively donate your Avios to Comic Relief with them getting 0.8 pence per Avios.

So, for example, donate 1,000 Avios and Comic Relief will get £8.

The slightly odd starting point however, is that you cannot donate your Avios to Comic Relief. You can, however, donate Nectar points to Comic Relief. This is at the entirely standard rate of 0.5 pence a point, so nothing special in itself:

(I’m perhaps being unduly idealistic, but you’d have thought, given the circumstances, Nectar could have given these donations some sort of boost.)

However, as we really hope you now all know, Avios has become a Nectar partner, and each Avios (minimum transfer is 250 Avios) will get Nectar points. That means each Avios will get you a donation of 0.8p (1.6 X 0.5p) to Comic Relief.

An obvious warning

Clearly, it’s potentially great if people use this route to give to a clearly worthwhile charity. However, note that donations made this way will not benefit from the 25% gift aid.

As a result, if you are Avios-rich and want to donate to Comic Relief but could otherwise add gift aid, I would suggest:

• You simply make a cash donation to Comic Relief, adding Gift Aid
• You convert a chunk of Avios to Nectar points, and treat yourself to a shopping spree at Sainsburys, Argos or eBay.

If you don’t benefit from Gift Aid and want to make a donation to Comic Relief, this is actually a pretty good way to spend your Avios. Travel options are hardly plentiful at the moment.

We’ve said it many times before, but the ability to instantly “cash out” your Avios at 0.8p each is a really good option. In these circumstances however, there’s little doubt that the “better value” option is to avail of the gift aid on a cash donation.