When the public donates to a charity through a Big Give campaign, we ask funders (philanthropists, foundations or corporates) to match that donation. So £50 from a member of the public, becomes £100 for a good cause.

Matching donations. Multiplying impact.

Funders, who we call Champions and Pledgers.

A Champion is a partner of the Big Give. A Champion can include high-net-worth individuals, foundations, philanthropists, trusts, statutory bodies, companies and corporations. You can see some examples of the Champions we work with on our For Funders page. 

A Pledger can be anyone in the charity’s network. This may include a trustee, foundation, trust, company, volunteer, high-net-worth individual and others. 

Match funding is a proven method to encourage more people to give and for people to give more. But the benefits don’t stop there!

For charities, by participating in a Big Give campaign, you can build your online presence, improve your digital fundraising skills, increase your charity profile and unlock new funding opportunities.

For the public, donating in a campaign means you can take advantage of the great doubling donations opportunity – meaning your money goes twice as far.

For funders, becoming a Champion means every £1 invested is leveraged at least twice, and sometimes even 4 or 5 times, to support a range of fantastic charities.

Big Give carries our due diligence on all charities that apply to take part in our match funding campaigns. This includes checking charity commission information and reviewing charity accounts and reserves. 

We have funding agreements with all funders providing match funding in our campaigns. Champions and Pledgers have made donations on the basis that they are being matched, so we ensure there is a full audit trail to demonstrate this. 

We have four main match funding models which we use across our campaigns. You can learn more about our different models on our Match Funding Explainer webpage.

Gift Aid is a scheme available to charities which allows them to claim extra money from HMRC. The charity can claim an extra 25p for every £1 you donate. That’s as long as you’ve paid the basic rate of tax and make the donation from your own funds. For more information about Gift Aid, please see section 3.3 of our Terms & Conditions

Gift Aid is not matched. 

Big Give has a Gift Aid system that enables charities to authorise Big Give to act as an agent for them and make Gift Aid claims from HMRC on their behalf. For charities wanting to find out more, go to Support > Gift Aid > Gift Aid Claims in the charity portal.

If a charity does not wish for Big Give to claim Gift Aid on their behalf, charities can claim Gift Aid themselves and will find all of the necessary information to make the claim in their Big Give Account. 

We accept the following cards and payment methods:

visa   mastercard   maestro   solo    American Express   applepay   Google Pay

Our payments processor is Stripe and they require donations to be made online using a debit/credit card and Apple Pay and Google Pay. The following card types are accepted: Mastercard / Visa / Maestro / Switch / Solo / Delta / American Express. Please note different cards are subject to different fees. Please see Our Fees pages for more information. 

We now also accept BACS donations of £500 or more. Find out more about donation funds.

Donations on Big Give can be completed from anywhere in the world, however, must be made in £ (GBP).  It is the donor’s responsibility to be aware of any international charges made by their bank. We aim to include more currencies in the future.

Donations made by debit/credit card (including Apple Pay and Google Pay) can be refunded up to seven days from the donation date. Please get in touch with Big Give directly at hello@biggive.org. You will need to provide your donation reference number (as shown in the confirmation email receipt you received).

For donations made through donation funds, please get in touch with Big Give directly at hello@biggive.org within 3 days of the donation being made if you want a refund. Donations made via this feature are subject to different rules and may be paid out to charities quicker than debit or credit cards.

Any refund request made after seven days for debit/credit card or 3 days for donation funds must be made directly to the charity.

Big Give is a non-profit platform that allows charities to raise funds for good causes. We never charge fees to charities for joining our platform. Instead, we charge a small processing fee to cover the cost incurred in processing donations. This standard fee is deducted from the donation before it is paid to the charity.

Big Give works hard to keep the cost of donation processing low for our charities. As a result, we also rely on the generosity of people who donate on the platform and leave a Voluntary Tip, which helps us cover the costs of running and improving our platform. Read about our fees.

Please try refreshing the page or accessing the campaign page through a different browser or private browser. If the issue persists, to help us diagnose the issue, please send a screenshot of the issue you’re experiencing, along with the browser, version and device type you’re using, to hello@biggive.org

For charities, please use the Forgot Password link in the Charity Login area.

For supporters with a Donation Account, click on ‘Donate now’ on a charity campaign page, then click on the ‘Log in’ button in the middle of the page. You will see a ‘Forgot password?’ link, which will allow you to change your password.

Sites that accept donations are often targeted by people testing stolen cards to see if they still work. We protect our site from this fraudulent ‘card washing’ by checking that each person making a donation through BigGive.org is a real human by using Google reCAPTCHA puzzles. We appreciate that they can be annoying, but it is a vital part of our security systems to ensure the security of our site and your donations.

Please get in touch with us directly at hello@biggive.org

We have a ‘reservation system’, which means that if match funds are available when you begin a donation, these funds will be reserved for 30 minutes to allow you time to make your donation. If the timer has run out, you can restart your donation to confirm if match funds are still available.

Can’t find the answer you’re looking for above? Send us an email and we’ll aim to get back to you as soon as possible.

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