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Ep 38. Alex Day, Managing Director Big Give: The Generosity Multiplier!
63 Plays2 years ago
“What we have learned throughout the years of running the Big Give… is that Match Funding is a great way to get more people to give, and people to give more.”
The Big Give is the UK’s leading online match funding platform.
The Big Give Christmas Challenge took place from the 29th of November to the 6th of December 2022 and in that one week, raised £28.6m for over 1,000 charities across the UK.
With more than £233m raised to date, the Big Give has been a huge enabler of digital fundraising through Match Funding. With the strap line “Matching Donations, Multiplying Impact”, they are in essence, a Generosity Multiplier.
In this episode I speak with the Big Give’s Managing Director, Alex Day, about how the Big Give came into being, its plans for the future, and tech as an enabler for social good.
Alex also shares how through a focus on building resilience, skills and profile for charities, and amplifying the campaign’s messaging, they have enabled 92% of participating organisations to reach new supporters bringing in a third of the overall donations.
Charity fundraisers, listen to find out about the Big Give’s campaigns that are launching this year and how your charity could benefit.
Recorded December 2022.
Guest Biography
The Big Give is the UK's biggest digital match funding platform which has raised over £233m for not-for-profit organisations since 2008.
Alex Day joined the Big Give as Managing Director in 2015. During his tenure, Alex has has grown the size and impact of the Big Give's flagship campaign, the Christmas Challenge, from £7.2m raised for 258 charities in 2015, to £28.6m raised for 1,021 charities in 2022. He has also led on a number of high profile match funding campaigns, including raising £2.6m following the Grenfell Tower Fire.
Alex has spent the majority of his career in the not-for-profit sector. He has worked for a number of international development and humanitarian NGO's including Tearfund and Medair.
Alex holds a BA Hons in Business and Geography from Exeter University and an MA in Charity Management from St Mary's University, which included a thesis entitled 'Impact Bonds: The future of disaster resilience funding'. He is Vice-Chair of Excellent Development, an international development charity specialising in water conservation, and lives in Surrey with his wife and young son.
Links
https://donate.thebiggive.org.uk/
The Big Give is the UK’s leading online match funding platform.
The Big Give Christmas Challenge took place from the 29th of November to the 6th of December 2022 and in that one week, raised £28.6m for over 1,000 charities across the UK.
With more than £233m raised to date, the Big Give has been a huge enabler of digital fundraising through Match Funding. With the strap line “Matching Donations, Multiplying Impact”, they are in essence, a Generosity Multiplier.
In this episode I speak with the Big Give’s Managing Director, Alex Day, about how the Big Give came into being, its plans for the future, and tech as an enabler for social good.
Alex also shares how through a focus on building resilience, skills and profile for charities, and amplifying the campaign’s messaging, they have enabled 92% of participating organisations to reach new supporters bringing in a third of the overall donations.
Charity fundraisers, listen to find out about the Big Give’s campaigns that are launching this year and how your charity could benefit.
Recorded December 2022.
Guest Biography
The Big Give is the UK's biggest digital match funding platform which has raised over £233m for not-for-profit organisations since 2008.
Alex Day joined the Big Give as Managing Director in 2015. During his tenure, Alex has has grown the size and impact of the Big Give's flagship campaign, the Christmas Challenge, from £7.2m raised for 258 charities in 2015, to £28.6m raised for 1,021 charities in 2022. He has also led on a number of high profile match funding campaigns, including raising £2.6m following the Grenfell Tower Fire.
Alex has spent the majority of his career in the not-for-profit sector. He has worked for a number of international development and humanitarian NGO's including Tearfund and Medair.
Alex holds a BA Hons in Business and Geography from Exeter University and an MA in Charity Management from St Mary's University, which included a thesis entitled 'Impact Bonds: The future of disaster resilience funding'. He is Vice-Chair of Excellent Development, an international development charity specialising in water conservation, and lives in Surrey with his wife and young son.
Links
https://donate.thebiggive.org.uk/
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Transcript
The Role of Technology in Charities
00:00:00
Speaker
I was really taken about the power of technology and how it could be used in a sector where we need to drive more efficiency, we need better process, we need better engagement with our supporters, we need to deliver more impact and tech can really be an enabler for all of those things.
Season Introduction: Charity CEO Podcast
00:00:25
Speaker
Welcome to season four of the Charity CEO podcast, the podcast for charity leaders by charity leaders, bringing you inspirational and meaningful conversations with leaders who are driving change in the nonprofit space. I'm truly delighted and humbled that the show has been named in the Charity Times top 10 charity podcasts for 2022. Thank you all for that incredible endorsement. I'm Divya O'Connor, and here's the show.
The Big Give Christmas Challenge Overview
00:00:53
Speaker
The Big Give Christmas Challenge took place from the 29th of November to the 6th of December last year, and in that one week raised £28.6m for over 1,000 charities all across the UK. With over £233m raised to date, the Big Give has been a huge enabler of digital fundraising through match funding and call themselves the generosity multiplier.
Interview with Alex Day: Origins and Future of The Big Give
00:01:16
Speaker
In today's episode, I speak with the Big Gives managing director, Alex Day, about how the Big Give came into being, its plans for the future, and tech as an enabler for social good. Charity fundraisers, keep listening to find out about the Big Gives campaigns that are launching this year and how your charity could benefit. And as we kick off 2023, I would like to take this opportunity to wish you all a very happy new year.
00:01:45
Speaker
Hi Alex, welcome to the Charity CEO podcast. Thank you for joining us today. Hey Divya, it's great to be here. Thanks for having me. Well, I know we have lots of exciting things to talk about. So without further ado, let's dive into our icebreaker questions. Great. Question one, what was your first job?
00:02:03
Speaker
So my first job was working as a pizza delivery guy for Domino's Pizza during a school holiday. But I guess my first sort of proper job, if you like, after finishing university was working for the NGO tier fund in their human resources department. Question two, what is your professional superpower?
00:02:25
Speaker
Oh, great question. I think it's probably getting together a team of people and getting the absolute best out of them. I've got an amazing team at The Big Give and we definitely feel like we punch above our weight in terms of what we achieve without impact. So I think, yeah, bringing teams of people together. Brilliant. And the next question,
Alex Day's Personal Insights and Hopes
00:02:44
Speaker
what is the superpower you wish you had?
00:02:46
Speaker
That's another great one. I'm envious of people who are very good at public speaking. That is something I wish I could emulate. There are lots of great people in our sector who are fantastic public speakers and evoke a lot of passion and excitement. And I don't think I have that in my locker. So yeah, I think that's something I would love to work on.
00:03:09
Speaker
I think it is a skill that certainly takes a lot of practice to be good at. So Alex, as we're recording this just before Christmas, I feel that I need to ask you, what would you like Santa to bring you for Christmas?
00:03:22
Speaker
Oh, I think 24 hours of peace and quiet would be absolutely amazing. It's been a very tiring few months and so just some rest and recuperation, a nice glass of wine and some good cheese is all anyone wants I think at Christmas time but certainly that's something I would be delighted to receive.
00:03:40
Speaker
Excellent. Well, hopefully you do manage to get that glass of wine and cheese in. Thank you. Our final icebreaker question, if you had the opportunity to interview anyone in the world dead or alive, who would it be and what one question would you like to ask them? Oh, that is a fantastic question.
00:03:58
Speaker
Probably the one person that springs to mind, I never met my grandfather. He passed away before I was born and my grandmother and my mum always sort of said that I was very similar to him and he had some great stories, some really interesting life experiences he fought in the war and so I would probably ask him just to tell me about his life which is a very big question but would hopefully open up a big conversation to get to know him.
00:04:24
Speaker
Ah, that's lovely. Well, Alex, you are the managing director of The Big Give. Now, I doubt that there are many people who work in the UK charity sector who haven't heard of The Big Give, but nevertheless, tell us the origin story of The Big Give. What is it all about?
The Big Give's Evolution and Success in Match Funding
00:04:40
Speaker
Yeah sure so the big give was founded by sallick reed back in two thousand seven so i founded the reed recruitment business and obviously did build that business from the ground up from nineteen sixty onwards and was very successful through that company he always wanted to use his business for as a force for good and throughout his business career spend a lot of time thinking about how he could do that and established a number of charities.
00:05:07
Speaker
Read is a family-owned company and in the mid-2000s he was handing over the chairmanship of the company to his son and in his retirement he wanted a focus on his philanthropy so at that time in the mid-2000s he felt frustrated that there wasn't anywhere online where is someone who wanted to give money away and potentially significant amounts of money away to charity.
00:05:29
Speaker
that there wasn't anywhere online where he could search for charities, do his due diligence and make a commitment of support. So he tested that idea amongst some of his network and they all felt that that was a gap in the market. So he funded the build of the Big Give platform originally to be a sort of meeting place online between philanthropists and charities.
00:05:49
Speaker
It was launched in 2007 and surprisingly loads of charities registered on the platform. There's lots of PR around the launch and there was some donations that started to come through in that first year, but I guess nothing that really matched Sir Alex Ambition for what he hoped for from the platform. So in 2008 to really sort of kick things off.
00:06:10
Speaker
he decided to put up a million pounds of match funding for charities on the site to apply for. And the deal was, look, anything that you raise on the Big Give platform, we will match it pound for pound in this sort of set time period. That proved to be hugely successful. So that million pounds ran out in 45 minutes. It's the relic of the team at the time realized, okay, there's something really compelling in this sort of match funding offer. So I suppose to cut a long story short, our ethos and emphasis is still around.
00:06:39
Speaker
creating this sort of connection between philanthropists and charities, but the main vehicle for achieving that now is through running match funding campaigns. So we summarise what we do in four words, which is matching donations and multiplying impact. Brilliant. That must be some sort of record, Alex, in terms of one million raised in 45 minutes.
00:07:00
Speaker
It's not bad. Indeed. And I know that you have just recently completed the Big Give Christmas Challenge this year, which raised a phenomenal £28.6 million for 1,021 charities in the UK.
Joining The Big Give: Opportunities for Charities
00:07:14
Speaker
That's right. Absolutely brilliant. Congratulations on that success. Thank you. And I'm sure that all of the charities that participated are very, very grateful.
00:07:23
Speaker
But tell us a bit more in terms of how charities can get involved. Is there an application process? I mean, if I were a small charity listening to this podcast right now, what do I need to know about my charity taking part? Yeah, of course. So we are a charity ourselves. We say we're a sort of charity that exists for other charities.
00:07:44
Speaker
Small charity CEOs can register on the platform for free, so it's completely free to set up your charity on the Big Give platform. The only eligibility criteria we have for our Christmas Challenge campaign is that you have to be a UK registered charity with an income of £25,000 or more.
00:08:02
Speaker
and there's a whole sort of application process that charities go through. Strangely, we open up applications for our Christmas campaign in the summer. There's quite a long lead time into our Christmas campaign and there's several reasons for that. One of which is to make sure that we can notify charities in enough time in advance so they have time to prepare for the campaign.
00:08:22
Speaker
and we provide a free sort of suite of training and resources and templates and coaching for charities taking part to participate in. So I would encourage any charity that fits that criteria, which is probably most of your listeners, Divya, to get onto the Big Give platform and make sure that your sort of charity is registered and then you will receive notifications about upcoming match funding opportunities, including the Christmas Challenge and other campaigns that we have throughout the year.
00:08:51
Speaker
Excellent. I'll come back to other campaigns, but I'm curious about a couple of things. I know that you have an aspiration to raise a billion pounds for good causes by the end of this decade. So I'm curious to know how much has been raised to date, but I'm also very aware, being a fundraiser myself in terms of where I started out in the charity sector, that income is not the only measure of impact. So how do charities measure impact in terms of their participation?
00:09:18
Speaker
Yeah, so on the first part of your question, so we're just under a quarter of a billion pounds, so a quarter of the way there. So since we made our first foreign to match funding in 2008, we've raised 233 million pounds since that time. Wow. Yeah. And I guess particularly over the past few years, we've seen the amount raised on the platform sort of grow relatively significantly. So we've seen pretty much sort of
00:09:41
Speaker
30 to 40 percent year-on-year growth over the past few years and I think a lot of that has come out of the pandemic and the fact that we were sort of a digital option for charities to use to raise funds which I'm happy to unpack what we learned through that period in more detail in our conversation if that comes out in the wash.
00:10:00
Speaker
In terms of our impact, the way that we measure our impact is on the organizations themselves that take part in the campaign. So the Christmas campaign, our biggest campaign is Cause Neutral. So we support, as you said, over a thousand charities in our last campaign.
00:10:16
Speaker
Which as you can imagine varies hugely from small grassroots charities working in the north of england all the way up to the global NGOs and everything in between and so trying to articulate impact on the end beneficiary of the end community.
00:10:35
Speaker
we feel is probably too big enough for us to crack because we don't have that sort of level of impact expertise within the organization. And I think there are probably lots of other organizations working on this that I don't think we've necessarily cracked as a sector yet of how we can measure impact across the whole sector. So we took a decision about five years ago to focus our impact on the organizations themselves. So we talk about impact in three ways.
00:11:04
Speaker
We talk about resilience, we talk about skills, and we talk about profile. So resilience is all around helping charities develop new or existing income streams. Skills, as the name suggests, is how can we build capacity and skill within the sector to be better at fundraising. And profile is around giving our charity partners a platform to reach new audiences. And we measure each of those after each campaign that we run
00:11:32
Speaker
through both qualitative and quantitative data. I think I've seen a statistic that says 92% of your charity partners tell you that they have gained new supporters through participating in Big Give Challenges, which is absolutely fantastic incentive for charities to take part.
00:11:51
Speaker
Yeah, that's absolutely right. I think, you know, it's fair to say that most charities understandably come to us because of the sort of promise of match funding. But what they get as a result of taking part in our campaigns is so much more than that. And we all know how challenging acquisition is at the moment and trying to reach new supporters. And I guess that's part of our secret sauce, if you like it, the big give is that by bringing charities together in a moment of time when they're all taking part in one singular campaign,
00:12:20
Speaker
is that you know it's that age old cliche of the sun being greater than the individual parts and because all of the charities you know the thousand plus charities that were taking part in our christmas campaign
00:12:30
Speaker
were all talking about it to their supporters that creates a collectively a lot more noise and so the campaign was trending on twitter there were celebrities talking about it and so through that as a result we get all of this passing trade traffic from the sort of public that haven't been asked to be there by one of the charities but are there because they've just heard about the big give Christmas challenge and are interested and want to support
00:12:53
Speaker
charities at this time so yeah it's really great to hear so many charities telling us that they pick up new supporters and on average last year it was around a third of all of the donations on average from the charities were from people that were completely new to them so yeah it's great to be able to sort of add that value.
00:13:10
Speaker
That's brilliant. I love the idea of the Big Give being that shop front window, especially for smaller charities that may not have that sort of network and being able to amplify the messages of the sector. So Alex, you made reference to some of the new campaigns that are coming up in the new year. Tell us about them. I know the Green Fund is one as well as Champions for Children. Tell us about those.
00:13:33
Speaker
Yeah, that's right. So a few years ago, again, people understandably know us for the Christmas campaign. And we started to look at thematic areas where, A, we had interest from our philanthropic community in supporting charities in those sort of cause areas, and B, where we sort of knew there was significant need to raise more money in those particular areas. We started to identify some of those thematic areas. So the first of that was around climate and the environment.
00:14:00
Speaker
And so we launched our first ever Green Match Fund, which is supporting specifically environmentally focused charities, which launches around World Earth Day in April. We launched that back in 2021. So we've run it for two years now. The last campaign that we ran raised $2.7 million for about 140 different environmental charities.
00:14:21
Speaker
We're opening up applications for that campaign in January and would be delighted to hear from any environmental organization that has the environment or environmental impact as part of their charitable objects. You also referenced Divya, our Champions for Children campaign, which we run
00:14:39
Speaker
on behalf of the Childhood Trust, which is London's child poverty charity. We've partnered with them for almost a decade now to run that campaign, which focuses on alleviating the impacts of child poverty in London. So they support a portfolio of organizations that are working on that issue. Again, we've seen amazing growth of that campaign together with the sort of generosity of the Childhood Trust in putting batch funding into that campaign over the past few years. And again,
00:15:06
Speaker
would be delighted to hear from any charity that is working on that issue. Again, applications for that open in January and we've got lots of other campaigns coming on board as well. So yeah, I guess my main encouragement would be for charities to sort of get signed up on the website and you can see all of the campaigns that we have coming up.
00:15:24
Speaker
Yes, go to the biggive.org.uk and have a look. Thanks Divya, thanks for the plug. So Alex, I love how tech can be an enabler to really multiply the impact of giving and what the Big Give has done over the past decade or so has really been a testament to that. Tell us about the new developments that you are seeing in this space.
Digital Fundraising: The Role of Tech in Charities
00:15:49
Speaker
That's a great question. And I guess we referenced this a moment ago, Divya, but around the sort of pandemic and what we saw at that time through all walks of life.
00:15:58
Speaker
was how tech can be an enabler for good and the pandemic just accelerated adoption of technical practices in all walks of life, right? And so we saw and continue to experience an increased demand from charities to take part in our campaigns because we are a sort of digital solution and it's
00:16:21
Speaker
Well documented that the return on investment in the digital fundraising practices can offer a much greater return than sort of traditional practices because of the savings that tech can offer so i suppose the fact that we are a digital platform we've experienced this first hand.
00:16:38
Speaker
over the past few years particularly but we're sort of well networked within the sort of tech for good space and the fact that we are you know we are registered charity but we're at tech platform at the same time and there are loads of really exciting things happening in this space you know there's lots of
00:16:55
Speaker
Funding, going more into this, charities have had to pivot more significantly, I suppose, over the past few years because of the pandemic and now delivering services. I've lost count of the number of charity partners I've spoken to where they told me that they quickly had to adapt how they deliver their practice. But as a result, have seen much greater impact or much greater reach through the services that they've been able to deliver digitally, which they previously would deliver in person. I think it's really exciting.
00:17:25
Speaker
It can sometimes be really daunting for charities when you don't necessarily have that person internally or person on your board who really for one of the better phrase gets tech.
00:17:38
Speaker
But I think there are loads of like really quick wins that charities can benefit from in the sort of tech space. So yeah, my guess my like main advice in that space would be to try and identify who those people are in your organization. If you are feeling like that, if you are feeling like it's just really daunting or it's too big or I don't really understand what digital even means.
00:18:00
Speaker
is to identify those people in your organisation that perhaps do and empower them to sort of run with a new idea or trying something and starting small or look to add those skills to your board as well would be a sort of another great option. Do you provide any resources, guidance or signposting to charities that might be looking to go on this digital journey themselves?
00:18:24
Speaker
We do, Divya. For every campaign that we run, we provide a free suite of training and resources and skills for charities to use. And it's a source of great pride, I guess, in the feedback that we often hear from charities around that journey that we help nudge them towards. And we work with providers like the Foundation for Social Improvement and Lightful to provide this free training for charities. So we do hear from a number of our charities
00:18:52
Speaker
that the big give is their first ever digital fundraising campaign. And off the back of that, they're able to build their confidence in doing more digital fundraising in the future as a result of doing it. So we provide the training and the resources and coaching from my wonderful team.
00:19:09
Speaker
and then give them the opportunity to put all of that into practice straight away by participating in the campaign. And if nothing else, you know, even if they didn't hit their fundraising target or they didn't raise as much as they hoped, there's lessons to be learned there and hopefully skills to be sort of baked into the organization.
Increasing Philanthropy with The Beacon Collaborative
00:19:26
Speaker
Yes, it's a fantastic framework because you're essentially taking charities by the hand and giving them a framework by which they can sort of dip their toe in the water of digital fundraising. Right, exactly that. Alex, let's talk now about the levelling up agenda.
00:19:43
Speaker
There is a lot of research out there that shows that as a proportion of their overall wealth, rich people tend to give less than people in lower or middle income brackets. And we were chatting earlier about the work that The Big Give is doing in collaboration with the Beacon Collaborative that is looking to change this. Tell us about that.
00:20:02
Speaker
Yeah, we're big fans of Beacon. And if there are people listening that haven't heard of the Beacon Collaborative, I would absolutely encourage you to go and check out their work. Their whole res-on-debt, if you like, is around this insight that as a proportion of wealth, high net worth and ultra high net worth individuals do not give at the same level as the general public in the UK. And
00:20:25
Speaker
if we were to even be able to match that up a little bit that would unlock millions if not billions of philanthropic capital for the UK charity sector so there are big gains to be had and where in a sort of time where we know that entering austerity two point and other sort of income streams are more challenging.
00:20:48
Speaker
that unlocking more sort of private philanthropy is a big opportunity in the SWOT analysis for you know if we were to look at sort of UK fundraising sector and I guess one area where I feel and we feel at the big give and I think it would be fair to say I don't want to speak on their behalf but that beacon would also feel
00:21:09
Speaker
that there is a big sort of need is around this whole agenda of leveling up. And again, all of the evidence points towards the fact that the areas that need philanthropy the most in the UK are often the ones that receive a sort of lower proportion per head.
00:21:26
Speaker
And so we're really interested in how we can sort of change that and how match funding specifically could be deployed to support more of those underserved areas. I think it's fair to say being completely honest and candid that most of our sort of footprint through the Big Give has been through charities that are based in London and the Southeast. And of course there are exceptions to that. And we work with amazing charities all over the country, all over the United Kingdom.
00:21:55
Speaker
but we're really keen to level up, we're really keen to level up ourselves and to support that agenda, which despite anyone's sort of political leanings, I'm not sure anyone can argue with the need for areas that have been sort of left behind to receive more investment and create more opportunities for people.
00:22:15
Speaker
Absolutely. I mean, this is something that I feel really passionately about as well in terms of helping those from the least advantaged backgrounds or least advantaged communities. I'm currently serving as interim CEO with a youth mentoring charity called the Girls Network. And their premise is all about helping young girls age 14 to 19 and putting them in touch with professional female mentors, but specifically targeting those from the least advantaged communities.
00:22:42
Speaker
And I know Alex that they participated in the Big Give Challenge in Christmas and I'm very pleased to say met 100% of Target. So that is very exciting. One other thing to say on this Divya, I grew up in South Wales in Swansea and loved living there, loved growing up there. I was sort of very fortunate to come from a supportive family and was able to sort of go to
00:23:04
Speaker
university, but ultimately felt like after finishing my education, despite probably would love to have sort of eventually moved back there and lived and worked there that I didn't really feel like there were the opportunities in South Wales. But I'm also really conscious that it's probably really easy for me to say all of that stuff that I've just said about levelling out being a sort of privileged, white, middle class male based in just outside London,
00:23:34
Speaker
And the really key thing for us with all of the stuff that we do through the big give is to do it in partnership. And this is not about the big give coming into sort of areas to tell charities how to raise money because they've been doing it for much longer and probably more effectively than we can. But it's about joining that conversation.
00:23:53
Speaker
and saying how can we help rather than this is what you should do. Keen to stress that to your listeners that it's not about us just sort of coming in with a white flag thinking that we're here to sort of save the day but we're really keen to form partnerships and alliances for how we might be able to sort of support those areas that need to raise that sort of philanthropic capital.
00:24:12
Speaker
Absolutely.
The Need for Structural Change in the Charity Sector
00:24:13
Speaker
Thank you for sharing your story, Alex. I think all of us who are leaders in the charity sector are very cognisant that there is much more wider systemic and structural change that needs to happen. And it is, as you say, about starting the conversation in various places up and down the country. And hopefully the sector is good at being able to start those conversations, not only with the communities, but also with policymakers and
Alex Day's Career Journey in Charities
00:24:40
Speaker
government.
00:24:40
Speaker
I think that's a great segue Alex actually to hear a bit more about yourself because I did want to ask you about your leadership journey when specifically how you first got involved with the Big Give. My background's been in the non-profit industry and yeah I guess that came from sort of after university took a bit of time out and did the classic sort of traveling thing for a little while.
00:25:04
Speaker
and I absolutely cliched. I can hear myself talking now and cringing as I hear myself say it, but it took that time to really consider what I wanted out of my career and I did a fairly generic degree in business management geography and I didn't have a strong vocational pull.
00:25:28
Speaker
And through that time traveling, yeah, sort of took time to sort of really think about what I wanted out of life and ask myself those big questions. And at the end of university, I sort of applied for, again, a few sort of graduate schemes and
00:25:45
Speaker
as you do and actually in fact got offered one with BAE Systems which is a weapons manufacturer so it's which I turned down but it's interesting to think about those I guess the sort of sliding door moments in life right where you could have gone one direction or the other and I choose to sort of turn that down and go traveling instead so yeah I started as I said earlier in my quickfire questions I started off at Tierfund and it was in the NGO sector for a while
00:26:12
Speaker
I joined the big give in two thousand fifteen and just prior to that i was running at the uk office of an international NGO which is headquartered in switzerland but we had small offices across europe and the states as well.
00:26:24
Speaker
amazing organization called Medair, which is a sort of humanitarian organization. And throughout my time there, I suppose two things happened. One, I experienced the big give ourselves. So we use the big give as a fundraising tool. And I sort of experienced the magic of match funding firsthand. So
00:26:44
Speaker
we had one donor who would almost religiously give us a thousand pounds every september and one year i said to him would you buy holding off and giving it to us at christmas time instead because,
00:26:56
Speaker
your donation will sort of help us unlock this match funding. And he was delighted to do that. And when it came to the time, he was so enthralled with the concept that he increased his £1,000 donation to £2,000. That got matched, it got gift-aided, and he was so sort of taken by the process that he ended up almost evangelising to all of his friends about what a great sort of opportunity it was to maximise your donation. And so I experienced the sort of power of match funding firsthand.
Enhancing Charity Impact with Technology and Match Funding
00:27:24
Speaker
And the second thing that happened was that throughout my time at Meadow, we helped develop a partnership through the UK, but for the sort of global organization with a big American tech company. And when we were having the conversations with colleagues in our Swiss headquarters, it was very much lots of excitement internally about the prospects of how much we could raise through this partnership. And that was certainly a facet of it.
00:27:49
Speaker
But actually what had the greatest impact in the short term in Medair was actually the American tech company applying their product for free and providing expertise to help implement this sort of software across the organization. And the first iteration of it was in their finance team using the sort of tech to work on some finance reports, which sounds like not very exciting and quite boring.
00:28:14
Speaker
But actually, that implementation of the technology helped run those reports, which would previously take two finance officers two weeks to produce and reduce that time into one hour. So again, I was really taken about
00:28:29
Speaker
I suppose the power of technology and how it could be used in a sector where we need to drive more efficiency, we need better process, we need better engagement with our supporters, we need to deliver more impact, and tech can really be an enabler for all of those things. That took me on a journey, I guess, where A, I saw the power of match funding, and B, I saw the power of tech, and then the opportunity came up at the big give and was privileged to take on the role as MD.
Advice for Newcomers in the Charity Sector
00:28:54
Speaker
Brilliant. I'd like to actually, Alex, dig into match funding a bit more because I, like you, completely agree that it is a brilliant tool to essentially amplify the impact of donations. And I think match funding as a concept or construct has actually been around for a long time and you have obviously the UK aid match and other sort of big institutional pots of money that sometimes do this.
00:29:19
Speaker
But if a charity was looking to do this outside of the Big Give framework and campaigns, how might they be able to do it for themselves with their own funder base or supporter base? Do you have any tips or advice for a charity as to how they can go on that journey?
00:29:36
Speaker
Yeah, I think with everything, I mean, I suppose already mentioned this in our conversation, I guess I'm always a fan of starting small, failing fast, you know, all those cliches. And I think that it would be great for organizations just to try it. And the way that match funding usually works with the big give, and this doesn't mean that this is how other organizations have to implement it. But
00:29:59
Speaker
Hopefully this will provide some learning and potentially some sort of inspiration for listeners, but the way that we usually run it is that we have one or a few big funders who are willing to put up bigger sums of money.
00:30:13
Speaker
for charities then to go out to their wider supporter base and say anything that you give to us will be matched. And so I think for the charities that might want to dip their toe into this sort of match running area is firstly thinking about who you might approach to provide that match running offer.
00:30:32
Speaker
And what we've learned throughout the years of running the big give is that it's a really great incentive, particularly for higher income donors. So we did some research back in 2016, which sort of demonstrated and we surveyed a thousand donors as part of that, that sort of headline around match funding is a great way to get more people to give and people to give more.
00:30:56
Speaker
And for want of a better phrase, those donors who are higher up the income brackets get more excited about match funding. So their propensity to give in a matched campaign grows as you know, tracks along sort of income lines. So if you were to try and think about who might provide match funding for you, like any major donor that you've got is a great place to start because that sort of conversation of saying,
00:31:20
Speaker
your funding, your philanthropy can help us unlock more donations for our charity is a great hook for people to engage with. So I think it would be around starting small, try to identify who's going to provide that match and then devise a sort of fundraising strategy off the back of it would probably be my three point plan.
00:31:40
Speaker
Excellent. And if you go back and think of that Alex who had his backpack packed and was ready to go off traveling across the world on great adventures, looking back now, what would you say to him? What advice would you give him?
00:31:55
Speaker
Oh wow, what a big question. I heard someone speak once. I really wish I could remember who the speaker was because it was it's something that stayed with me a lot and it was in Cass Business School and there was some charity conference happening there and it was quite early on in my career and I remember the speaker talking about leadership and around sort of just going with gut instinct. If I reflect back on times
00:32:25
Speaker
where I've had challenges in my career, I feel like I've had a sort of instinct about which way something would go and I've not always listened to my gut. Because I was worried about offending someone or worried about making a decision at all and just sort of dilly dallying and not just not making a decision. And so I would probably
00:32:48
Speaker
so speak to my younger self and just say, have a bit more confidence in your instinct. And I wonder, I think the speaker that was talking at this conference.
00:32:57
Speaker
sort of pose that challenge of have you ever listened to your gut instinct and it be wrong and I think that is something that sort of stayed with me and something that sort of I try and encourage my team and others sort of around me to you know what's your gut telling you what's your instinct say about this situation that that you're facing or the decision that you need to make and if it's the wrong decision you'll learn through it but I think more times than not I would probably hazard a guess to say that your gut is probably telling you what you need to know.
00:33:27
Speaker
Indeed.
Perseverance in the Charity Sector
00:33:28
Speaker
Well, thank you, Alex. It's been great speaking with you today. And in closing now, do you have any final thoughts or further reflections that you would like to share? I mean, what is one thing you would like listeners to take away from this conversation? I would just say about perseverance. I think that's such an important theme and topic at the moment. You know, we've
00:33:49
Speaker
come out of a really difficult time as a sector through the pandemic. There was probably a lot of celebration when things sort of returned to normal in a bit of covers. And now, you know, we've seen a year like no other in terms of a war in Ukraine, the death of our monarch, a cost of living crisis, political turmoil, and
00:34:12
Speaker
as we started off right at the start of the call, you know, I feel exhausted and I feel probably others in the sector just feel exhausted as well. But the great privilege that we have at The Big Give is almost having this bird's eye view of the sector because we support so many different types of organisations and not a day goes by where I'm not inspired by the amazing work that charities do with so little and under such scrutiny
00:34:40
Speaker
and with limited resources so I would just really want to encourage listeners to say we see that others see that and just keep going despite the difficulties keep going and there's that film about the old people's home
00:34:57
Speaker
in India, right? The name escapes me. But the dev Patel who plays the main character says it will be all right in the end. And if it's not, the Marigold Hotel. That's it. Thank you. Just had a complete brain freeze, probably due to my tiredness. But yeah, I think it will be all right in the end. And if it's not, all right, it's not the end. And so I would just really encourage your listeners just to keep going because the work that that you and they do is just incredible. And we're so proud to be a little part of it.
00:35:26
Speaker
Brilliant. So this podcast is going to go out in January, 2023. So hopefully that is a great inspirational note to set us all up for the new year ahead. Yeah, I hope so. Do we? I hope so. Well, thank you, Alex. It's great having you and I've really enjoyed our conversation. Thank you for being a guest on the show. Yeah. Thanks so much for having me.
00:35:50
Speaker
As the line from the best exotic Marigold Hotel goes, everything will be alright in the end. So if it is not alright, it is not the end. And to add another line from the book's author, Deborah Moggah, the only real failure is the failure to try. And the measure of success is how we cope with disappointment.
00:36:08
Speaker
And so, charity sector colleagues, as we dust off our holiday sparkles and open the door on another year, know that we do great work. That there are thousands, no millions of people out there who rely on our services. And in our efforts to serve them, we shall persevere and we shall certainly not fail in that.
00:36:29
Speaker
I hope you enjoyed this latest episode of the Charity CEO podcast. A show that, thanks to you, our listeners, has repeatedly reached the number one spot in Apple's nonprofit podcast category. If you found this conversation valuable, please share or tag us on Twitter or LinkedIn or Instagram, and make sure you subscribe to the show by clicking the subscribe button on your podcast app.
00:36:51
Speaker
If you are feeling inspired or uplifted by what you have just heard, please share the joy and leave us a five-star review. Visit our website, thecharityceo.com, for full show details, information on previous season episodes, and to submit ideas for future guests. In order to balance my personal and professional commitments, the show will now come to you once a month instead of fortnightly. But I assure you it will be worth the wait. Thank you for listening.