Jon Snow and Martha Lane Fox join The Big Give board

Fundraising | Becky Slack | 2 Jul 2008

Martha Lane-Fox and Jon Snow are the latest individuals to join The Big Give’s board of philanthropists.

Lane-Fox, founder of lastminute.com and Snow, the Channel 4 News broadcaster (pictured), join 28 other philanthropists including Sir John Cadbury, former chair of Cadbury Schweppes and Michael Spencer, chief executive of ICAP, on the board. Their role is to promote the website as a useful tool for major donors looking for projects to support.

“We want to make The Big Give the first step for any donor looking to give intelligently. Our 30-strong board of philanthropists helps us tailor the site to let donors find new charities and projects more effectively,” said Alec Reed, founder of the site.

www.thebiggive.org.uk, an initiative of the Reed Foundation, launched in October 2007 and allows charities to list projects that need funding of £5,000 upwards. Some 4,400 charities are currently using the site to promote 3,650 projects that need a total of £1.5bn of funding.

However, it is not known how much money has been raised by The Big Give so far. The site’s developers says they don’t measure it because so many donors want to give anonymously.

“The Reed Foundation gives away £1m a year through the site, which allows us close access to find out whether it’s working or not. And we have had feedback from charities working in a range of sectors who tell us that they have had high-level donors approach them,” said Jon Brookes at The Big Give.

“We don’t measure how much has been raised as we wanted to allow donors to remain anonymous if desired.”

The full board of philanthropists can be accessed at: http://www.thebiggive.org.uk/our_supporters.php

Who's Who: Becky Slack

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