The Big Give 

Empowering Fundraisers

Money Matters 

Represent Women exists to support the North East women and girls sector to thrive. Funding is top of the list of concerns for many of our members. Last week Represent Women led a collaborative session to explore how small women and girls charities can leverage The Big Give matched funding platform to maximise community and corporate donations.  

What is The Big Give?  

The Big Give is a national fundraising initiative, which runs schemes across the year where all public funds raised over seven days are ‘matched’ to double the donations and put more money and more power into the hands of charities. Their schemes include ethe women and girls matched fund, Champion for Children and Christmas Challenge. After applying to The Big Give, much like an ordinary grant application, successful organisations plan and deliver fundraising campaigns to generate as many public donations as they can over those seven days. 

Equipping the sector 

The session aimed to equip local women-led groups with the tools to fundraise effectively. Many small women and girls organisations lack the capacity, experience and tools to plan for and leverage the community and corporate donations which are needed for an effective Big Give campaign. 

Section 1: Why Fundraising Matters for Women-Led Organisations 

Women-led organisations often face systemic barriers in accessing traditional funding streams, including reduced capacity, limited networks, underrepresentation in decision-making spaces, and gendered biases in philanthropy. These challenges can hinder their ability to grow, innovate, retain staff, and sustain long-term impact in their communities. The Big Give enables charities to build upon community and corporate donations which can enable charities to diversify their funding streams. Community fundraising can be very labour intensive with low yields, a matched giving model helps to make ths mot of every £1 raised.  

The Big Give offers a powerful platform to amplify their efforts, providing match funding opportunities that double donations, increase visibility, and build donor trust. 

Highlights from the Training Session 

The session ran on May 14th at WHIST in South Shields. We explored the ways that imagery, tone of voice, ethics and customer experience all play a part in generating not just donations but happy donors who will stick with you and give again (coffee cups helped illustrate this part!).  

We began the session by asking ‘can I have a fiver?’ Exploring when and who particpants would part with their money. Asking who would you give £5 to, what about £50? What questions would you need to ask? Would you feel ‘good’ about giving that money away?  

The session was relaxed and interactive to create a space to share knowledge, explore questions and concerns and think creatively around barriers.  

Key topics covered: overview of The Big Give, campaign planning, storytelling, donor engagement, prospecting, and match funding strategies. 

What’s Next? 

Represent Women are here to support the North East women and girls’ sector through collaboration, session facilitating and resource sharing as needs arrive. If you’re interested in repeat of the session, resources or support for The Big Give or in exploring other topics, please reach out to us.  

Sign up to our newsletter to keep up top date with planned sessions, workshops and networks.