Alex Day

Spear’s Review

The Big Give was launched by Sir Alec Reed as an online portal to help philanthropists discover charities and promote intelligent giving. A year later, Reed introduced match funding to the platform, which has proved wildly successful, as managing director Alex Day explains: ‘Since 2008, we’ve helped raise over £250 million for the charitable sector through match-funding campaigns.’ 

Day has been pivotal in driving the growth of match funding in the UK, leading the Big Give’s annual Christmas Challenge and the 2017 Grenfell Tower appeal which raised more than £2.6 million. The Big Give works with a network of philanthropic ‘champions’ (including HNWs, trusts, foundations and companies) which match fund a portfolio of charities curated by the Big Give.

Adviser Profile

Alex is Managing Director of the Big Give, the digital match funding platform which has raised £200 million for thousands of not-for-profits since being founded in 2008. Alex manages the relationships with the Big Give’s match funding ‘Champion’ partners such as Trusts & Foundations, Companies, (U)HNWs and Public Funders. These have included Julia & Hans Rausing, The Reed Foundation, The Childhood Trust, DCMS and Garfield Weston Foundation, amongst many others. 

He specialises in supporting philanthropists and funders to maximise their impact through the Big Give’s innovative match funding model. ‘Our Champions love partnering with us as we leverage their funding, sometimes more than 5x,’ says Alex. ‘We also do all the heavy lifting on the charity due diligence, so we’re a highly impactful vehicle for philanthropists and funders to utilise.’ 

During his tenure, he has led many high-profile match funding campaigns, including trebling the size of its flagship ‘Christmas Challenge’, which raised over £24m in 2021, and launching a matched appeal for Ukraine, which raised £3.8m. 

Alex has grown the footprint of the Big Give, which now runs many campaigns throughout the year to support best-inclass charities in specific thematic areas, including the environment, women and girls, mental health, the cost of living crisis and humanitarian crises, amongst others.

‘Our success really derives from bringing people together. Our Champions, the charities and the public are united through our technology. It’s a true case of the sum being greater than its parts,’ says Alex. 

He has spent most of his career in the not-for-profit sector, holds a BA Hons in Business and Geography from Exeter and MA in Charity Management from St Mary’s and is Vice-Chair of an international development charity.