£1m match fund meltdown

Fundraising | Celina Ribeiro | 11 Dec 2008

The Big Give was twice forced to shut down its £1m match fund offer because its website was unable to cope with demand.

Big Give’s site was so overwhelmed by demand for its pound-for-pound match funding offer, it crashed just 18 minutes after launching on Monday morning - by which time £600,000 had already been donated.

The site became active again at 10am on Tuesday but was disabled again almost immediately. It restarted at midday, and it took charities just 27 minutes to empty the pot.

Donations poured in at a rate of £44,000 per minute and the average gift was was more than £1,400.

Big Give spokeswoman Hanna Lewis told Professional Fundraising that the site had not anticipated that so many people would be “excited" and generous”.

She said: “It was scary for us at this end because we had so much going on, but it’s really exciting to think that there’s still that many people who are excited to give,” she said.

Speaking to PF last week, Lewis said that Big Give staff had originally expected that the fund may last months.

Jon Brooks, managing director of the organisation said: "To have all this donated in minutes is incredible."

Who's Who: Celina Ribeiro

Comments

[Cancel] | Reply to:

Name *

Email *

Organisation

Job Title

Comments *

Verification *

* Please read our Community Standards

Close »

Community Standards

The civilsociety.co.uk community and comments board is intended as a platform for informed and civilised debate.

We hope to encourage a broad range of views, however, there are standards that we expect commentators to uphold. We reserve the right to delete or amend any comments that do not adhere to these standards.

We welcome:

Robust but respectful debate
Strongly held opinions
Intelligent relevant discussion
The sharing of relevant experiences
New participants

We will not publish:

Rude, threatening, offensive, obscene or abusive language, or links to such material
Links to commercial organisations or spam postings. The comments board is not an advertising platform
The posting of contact details for yourself or others
Comments intended for malicious purpose or mindless abuse
Comments purporting to be from another person or organisation under false pretences
Gratuitous criticism, commentary or self-promotion
Any material which breaches copyright or privacy laws, or could be considered libellous
The use of the comments board for the pursuit or extension of personal disputes

Be aware:

Views expressed on the comments board are left at users’ discretion and are in no way views held or supported by Civil Society Media
Comments left by others may not be accurate, do not rely on them as fact
You may be misunderstood - sarcasm and humour can easily be taken out of context, try to be clear

Please:

Enjoy the opportunity to express your opinion and respect the right of others to express theirs
Confine your remarks to issues rather than personalities

Together we can keep our community a polite, respectful and intelligent platform for discussion.