The first day of The Big Give’s annual Christmas matching challenge has gone ahead without any problems.

The matching campaign, which in previous years has been marred by system collapses leaving some charities upset, involves organisations raising a match fund from their major donors, which is backed by a matched donation by The Big Give’s sponsor the Reed Foundation. In December, starting yesterday, the charities then rally their other supporters to donate via the Big Give page, thus activating the matched funds made available by Reed and the major donors.

Yesterday, the first of three days of matching, saw nearly £4m donated within the first two hours and by lunchtime the majority of charities had exhausted their allocated funds for the day.

Helen Cable, managing director of Big Give, said the majority of the £4m was “raised pretty much in the first hour”.

Cable told civilsociety.co.uk Big Give was conscious of not repeating the errors of the past. “We spent all year trying to combat the problems of the last year,” she said.