What a year it’s been for us here at Big Give HQ! At a time when so many across our country and the world are struggling, the generosity of our Champions, the public and the hard work and impact of our charity partners has never been more needed. 

This year has, once again, demonstrated the power of match funding campaigns; more people give, and people give more when their donations are matched. We have raised over £42.8m, taking the total raised in the lifetime of Big Give to £233m. We celebrated our 15th birthday this year, and our board and team agreed to a new strategy to raise £1bn by 2030. We are almost a quarter of the way there, but there is still a long way to go! 

One of my favourite projects this year has been working on our new brand. We launched it a few months ago and had it live on our new website in time for our biggest campaign, the Christmas Challenge. At the heart of our new brand was the idea of a ‘Generosity Multiplier’. We took time to articulate our values which I think perfectly sums up what we’re about: 

We are Generous 

We are Purposeful

We are Trustworthy 

We are Together 

It is a source of enormous pride to work for an organisation that puts those values at the heart of everything we do (and, if you’re interested, you can see some of the implementation of our new brand in this short explainer video about what Big Give does). 

As part of the rebrand, we also redefined our purpose statement: “To multiply the impact of generous giving and tackle the world’s big challenges”. And, my goodness, 2022 has certainly been a year of big challenges. We’ve seen the biggest conflict on the European continent since WW2, the cost of living crisis, political turmoil, further evidence of the climate emergency such as record temperatures in the UK and floods in Pakistan, and the death of our monarch, to name but a few things. 

I’m so proud that Big Give has been able to respond to some of these challenges. This year, we:

Among all the campaigns we’ve run, we were delighted to implement our new website with our fresh new brand. We’ve also introduced new features to make the whole performance of the platform more stable, secure and, crucially, frictionless for all of our customers. This has included allowing donors to save card details to ease repeat donations, launching a beta version of a donation credit scheme (which we will roll out further in 2023) and working with JP Morgan’s Force For Good programme on a new customer service facility which will go live in 2023. 

None of this would be possible without our incredible Big Give team, board of trustees and volunteer ambassadors. They really are an incredibly hard-working and talented bunch and I, as MD, owe each and every one of them a debt of gratitude. We’ve said goodbye to some of our colleagues this year but have welcomed new talent and experience into the Big Give team. 

After a well-earned rest, we are focused and excited to take whatever 2023 has to throw at us and continue on our journey to match donations and multiply impact here, at home, and further afield. 

Thanks for being part of the journey. 

Alex

Big Give is the UK’s #1 match funding platform. We match donations to multiply generosity and create a lasting impact in the world. Big Give has raised over £200m for thousands of great causes through the power of match funding. Find out more.