2 Weeks to Go... Big Give Christmas Challenge 🎄

In just 2 weeks’ time, at 12:00pm on Tuesday 3rd December, the Big Give Christmas Challenge will be launched. Following our successes in 2022 and 2023, African Children's Fund is very excited to be participating once again, and with your help, we'll continue the success!

This year, we have set our biggest ever fundraising target and we are aiming to raise a phenomenal £13,500 in the 7 days that follows the launch. This will provide 150,000 mugs of porridge to children in Kenya, to tackle school absence caused by food poverty.

Each donation made on our special Big Give Christmas Challenge page during that week will be DOUBLED £-for-£ thanks to our match funding pot, consisting of a generous pledger and our wonderful Champions, the Coles-Medlock Foundation, until our target is reached.

One donation, double the difference.

We’ll share another post on 3rd December to let you know exactly how you can donate to the campaign (please hold off donating before then!) but based on our experience in the past couple of years, we thought it might be useful to share some answers to Frequently Asked Questions below so you can prepare accordingly.

In the meantime, bookmark our special Big Give Christmas Challenge page and set a calendar reminder for 12:00 on 3rd December!

Frequently Asked Questions

• How Much are you hoping to raise from the Big Give Christmas Challenge this year?

  African Children’s Fund is hoping our supporters will donate £6,750 during the Big Give Christmas Challenge week. We also have a £6,750 match funding pot available so if we reach our target, we will raise £13,500 to support our Kenyan Porridge Clubs. That would be enough to provide a mug of nutritious porridge to approximately 2,750 primary school children for 3 months!

• Where can I donate to African Children's Fund's Big Give Christmas Challenge?

  Simply click here to donate to our special Big Give Christmas Challenge page. The donation button will be live from midday on Tuesday 3rd December until 11:59 on Tuesday 10th December. Remember, until we reach our target, every £9 you donate will actually be worth £18 which is enough for 200 mugs of porridge.

• How does the match funding work?

  Prior to the launch date, we received an anonymous pledge totalling £3,375 which forms the first part of our match funding pot. This has also been matched by The Coles-Medlock Foundation who have put forward a further £3,375 which is known as ‘champion funding’. The pledge and the champion funding combine to give us a match funding pot of £6,750. This means the first £6,750 of donations that we receive on our dedicated page during the Big Give Christmas Challenge week will be matched pound for pound.

  When you make a donation, you will be notified whether matching funds are still available. If so, the funds are reserved for 30 minutes to allow you to complete your donation. If the donation is not completed within 30 minutes, the matching funds are released back into our matching pot. If applicable, you will be notified about this.

• Which payment methods are accepted?

  You can pay by debit card, credit card, Apple Pay or Google Pay. The following card types are accepted: Mastercard / Visa / Maestro / Switch / Solo / Delta / American Express.

• Can I donate by Bank Transfer?

  As Bank Transfers may take 5 days to be realised, they may fall outside the match funding period. Therefore, we do not recommend setting these up for this campaign. To contribute to the Big Give Christmas Challenge, please make your donation on our dedicated Big Give Christmas Challenge page.

• Can I make a donation in one of your charity shops?

  Unfortunately not for this campaign. To contribute to the Big Give Christmas Challenge, all donations must be made on our dedicated Big Give Christmas Challenge page.

• Can I donate on a different website like JustGiving?

  Unfortunately not for this campaign. To contribute to the Big Give Christmas Challenge, all donations must be made on our dedicated Big Give Christmas Challenge page.

• Can I still donate if you have exceeded your target?

  Absolutely! There is no donation cut-off amount so if we receive donations over and above our target, it will mean even more children will be supported to go to school. If we exceed our £6,750 donations target, additional funds won’t be matched but you will still be providing even more mugs of porridge to help children attend school regularly in Kenya.

• What happens if you miss your target?

  While we hope this isn’t the case, that’s OK too. If we don’t reach our target, your donations will still be matched and we will still receive them. It will simply mean that we don’t exhaust our match funding pot and unused pledges or ‘champion funding’ will instead be returned to the original donors.

• Can you reclaim Gift Aid on my donation?

  Yes indeed! If you are eligible for Gift Aid, you can indicate this when making your donation. We will include your donations in a claim to HMRC after the Big Give Christmas Challenge is complete. Please note, Gift Aid is not matched from the match funding pot.

• Does the Big Give take any fees from my donation?

  Every donation made on the platform is subject to a small payment processing fee of 1.5% + 20p + VAT (UK & EU) or 3.2% + 20p + VAT (Non-EU & American Express). We feel these fees are very reasonable. If you wish, you can also give an optional ‘tip’ to The Big Give, and this doesn’t affect how much money we receive. Full details of their fee structure are available here. We reclaim the Gift Aid directly so you can ignore this element of the calculation!