There’s little doubt that James Reed (MBA 1990) loves his job. After all, he’s the chairman and CEO of Reed, the United Kingdom’s first and largest jobs website, and he takes the company’s slogan—“Love Mondays”—to heart. Even so, he admits he has a side hustle.

When he’s not running the wildly successful recruitment firm, Reed is deeply involved in the Big Give, an innovative match-funding platform that hosts online fundraising appeals for charities. By engaging philanthropists and companies to match donations made by the public, the platform effectively multiplies the gifts’ impact. The Reed Foundation launched the Big Give in 2007, and since then, it has raised nearly £200 million for 10,000 charities that address a range of causes, from climate change and cancer research to food insecurity and humanitarian disasters, to name just a few.

The Big Give works by asking big donors—known as champions—to put money in a match fund set up for a cause they want to support. That sets in motion a series of steps that can potentially increase the original contribution by as much as five times. “For example,” says Reed, “if the Reed Foundation, which is a champion, commits £10,000 to the match fund for Save the Children, then that charity also has to get another supporter to match the £10,000. So when the campaign goes live, there’s £20,000 in the pot to match public donations. Hopefully they’ll raise the full amount, for a total of £40,000.” There’s another bonus: a UK tax rebate called Gift Aid, which adds another 25 percent to the public donations. In this case, if all donations were eligible, that would add an extra £5,000 for the cause.

“We call this the ‘generosity multiplier,’” says Reed. “It’s very attractive to donors. They can give £100,000 or £20. By donating through the Big Give, they know they’ll help raise a lot more money for the causes they care about.”

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