# The Big Give raises £2 million in 45 minutes

- Link: https://fundraising.co.uk/2008/12/02/big-give-raises-2-million-45-minutes/
- Published: 2008-12-02T19:55:53+00:00
- Author: Howard Lake

![](https://www.fundraising.co.uk/files/images/news/Thebiggive_1228265735.gif)

Philanthropy website The Big Give this week raised £2 million in under an hour in
a matched giving campaign. This represented an average of £44,000 a minute.

The surge of online donations came in response to the pledge by Alec Reed CBE, founder
of Reed Recruitment Group and of theBigGive, to match donations of up to £5,000 (
per donor, per charity) from his Reed Foundation up to a maximum of £1 million.

Clearly a number of charities had encouraged their supporters to take advantage 
of this offer as £600,000 was donated within 18 minutes of the matched giving service
going live. The volume of activity surprised The Big Give and the site crashed.

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The £1 million total was reached after the scheme went live for a further 27 minutes
today with an average donation of over £1,400. The total was reached with just 681
donations.

Jon Brooks, Managing Director of The Big Give, said: “We thought the £1 million 
would be matched within a couple of weeks. To have all of it donated in minutes 
is incredible”.

The Reed Foundation matched funding scheme was the first of its kind to take place
on The Big Give, although [Alec Reed gave £250,000 in vouchers](https://www.fundraising.co.uk/big-give-give-away-250000-businesses)
to 10,000 top UK businesses to give to charities on the site during September.

Brooks and The Big Give team hope that the matched giving scheme will encourage 
individuals, companies, trusts and foundations to start their own matched funding
schemes for their favourite charities on the site.

www.thebiggive.org.uk

 * **[The Big Give offers matching grant to encourage online donations for Whitechapel Gallery](https://fundraising.co.uk/2009/04/03/big-give-offers-matching-grant-encourage-online-donations-whitechapel-gallery/)**(
   3 April 2009)
 * **[Video interview with Jason Potts of THINK Consulting](https://fundraising.co.uk/2009/07/13/video-interview-jason-potts-think-consulting/)**(
   13 July 2009)
 * **[The Big Give 2009 Christmas Challenge raises £3 million in two hours](https://fundraising.co.uk/2009/12/18/big-give-2009-christmas-challenge-raises-3-million-two-hours/)**(
   18 December 2009)

## Comments

### By: admin

- Link: https://fundraising.co.uk/2008/12/02/big-give-raises-2-million-45-minutes/#comment-3428
- Published: 2008-12-15T12:22:00+00:00

You might assume that it was the bigger charities that benefited from this matched
funding exercise. Not so, according to Jon Brooks of The Big Give.

Following my [interview with the Managing Director of The Big Give](https://fundraising.co.uk/node/177113#comment-3428)
last week, he confirmed that the top 10 charities received less than 1% of the total
raised in that event. Furthermore, the largest donation of the campaign, worth “
over £150,000”, was given to a regional charity.