The minimum donation has been reduced this year from £5 to £1 to allow even more people to donate, whatever their budget. Donations of up to £25,000 can be made but any amount donated above the amount in matching funds we have left available at the time the donation is made will only be processed as a normal unmatched donation. For example, if you donate £1,000 but we have only £500 remaining in matching funds at the time then only £500 of your donation will be matched. It will be very clearly displayed when you make your donation whether we have matching funds remaining and, if so, exactly how much.

We usually have two pots of ring-fenced matching funds available; one which been pledged by our Trustees and major supporters and a further pledged by our BigGive ‘Charity Champion’. Donations are first be matched using the pledges from our Trustees and supporters; only when this is exhausted is Charity Champion funding be used to match donations.

In the past our ‘Champions’ have included the Coles-Medlock Foundation and the Reed Foundation. Occassionally, we have taken part in a private-match using only pledges from our own supporters when we have been unsuccessful in securing ‘Champion’ funding.

Donations must be made online using a debit/credit card. The following card types are accepted:
Mastercard / Visa / Maestro / Switch / Solo / Delta / American Express / CAF Bank Business cards displaying the MasterCard® logo

No. Only donations made online via theBigGive website will be matched. No cash or cheque donations, or donations made directly via the CAF donation form on our website or via any other donation platform such as JustGiving or GlobalGiving will be matched. 

You are able to donate from abroad as long as you have one of the accepted card types. These are Mastercard / Visa / Maestro / Switch / Solo / Delta / American Express. As the Christmas Challenge is hosted in the UK, all references to time are Greenwich Mean Time, or GMT. If you are donating from abroad, you will need to donate via thebiggive.org.uk from midday GMT on Tuesday 30 November – you can check what time that equates to where you are here.

All donations made via the BigGive platform are subject to a small payment processing fee of 1.5% plus 20p*.

At checkout you will be given the option to add a voluntary tip to your donation to help towards the costs of running the BigGive.

Read about more about fees here.

*For donations made using a UK/EU Visa or Mastercard. Non EU and American Express donations are subject to a processing fee of 3.2% plus 20p.

Yes. All online donations are processed by Stripe and are securely encrypted and processed using SSL with a minimum 128-bit encryption and firewalls. It only stores card data on PCI DSS Level 1 compliant servers, the highest level of security. Furthermore, your connection to the Big Give is encrypted so it is perfectly safe to donate via their systems. 3D Secure may also be incorporated by your card issuer to complete the donation process.