The Big Give’s Christmas Challenge 2018 campaign, which ran from 27th November – 4th December, raised over £13.3m for 589 participating charities. This year’s campaign is the biggest, both in terms of charities supported and total raised,in the Big Give’s 10 year history.
The match funding was provided by a number of ‘Champions’ including The Reed Foundation,The Childhood Trust, Candis, The Garfield Weston Foundation, The People’s Postcode Lottery and The Waterloo Foundation amongst others.
The campaign resonated strongly with the public. The average donation in the campaign was £175 and over 35,000 people donated. #ChristmasChallenge18 trended on Twitter for most of the opening day.
Celebrities like David Tennant, Professor Green and Davina McCall also backed the campaign and released videos in support of some of the charities participating in the campaign. Channel 4 Newsreader, Jon Snow, also backed the campaign and voiced its official video.
The Big Give and the Christmas Challenge campaign are the brainchild of Sir Alec Reed,founder of the Reed recruitment business. This was the tenth Christmas Challenge campaign hosted by the Big Give. Thanks to funds raised in the campaign, the Big Give reached an important milestone in its history, crossing £100m raised for good causes. The total raised by the Big Give now stands at £112,652,378.
The success of the campaign was celebrated at an evening reception on 4th December at 11 Downing Street, hosted by the wife of the Chancellor, Mrs Susan Hammond.
Sir Alec Reed CBE, founder and chairman of the Big Give commented:
“We are delighted by the success of this year’s record breaking campaign in our 10th year of running the Christmas Challenge. It once again proves what a powerful tool match funding is for both funders and fundraisers. I am so proud of all of the hard work of the charities which were supported in the campaign. We know that the funds raised will help tackle some of the biggest challenges in our society and our planet. I am alsoi ncredibly thankful to our match funding Champions for their generosity and for backing the campaign.”
At the reception at 11 Downing Street, The Big Give also announced that it was investing in its technology to be able to run more match funding campaigns in the future with an ambitious goal of helping to reach £1bn raised for good causes. It is expected that they will re-launch the platform in the spring of 2019.