Outstanding support for the Big Give Christmas Challenge 2022
Monday 27 March 2023
The Royal College of Music’s 2022 Big Give Christmas Challenge broke last year’s achievement with a new record of £137,338 raised for the RCM Scholarships Fund.
The funds once again far exceeded the RCM’s target of £120,000 and will contribute to supporting young musicians in their studies at the world’s top conservatoire.
The Big Give Christmas Challenge is the UK’s biggest match funding campaign, with 2022 marking the RCM’s 13th year of involvement. The campaign ran from Tuesday 29 November, known as #GivingTuesday, until Tuesday 6 December 2022.
During that week, any gift from £1 to £25,000 made to the Royal College of Music via the Big Give was matched up to a total of £60,000. Out of over 1,000 participating charities in the Christmas Challenge, the RCM attracted the tenth highest amount of philanthropic giving and topped the charts for all arts organisations, thanks to our wonderful community of supporters.
This year, the aim was to support even more young musicians through the RCM Scholarships Fund. We were delighted to exceed our target, with £124,557 raised plus £13,535 in Gift Aid.
We remain committed to our founding principle of 1882: that gifted young musicians should have the opportunity to study with us, regardless of their background or means. For many of our students, financial support through our Scholarships Fund enables them to relish the opportunities available to them, and to fulfil their potential, without the burden of financial concerns — this makes the dream of performing on the international stage a reality.
This couldn’t be more important in the face of an acute cost-of-living crisis, devastating war in Ukraine, and arts funding cuts.
We are deeply grateful for the outstanding support we received through the Big Give Christmas Challenge. It is only with the tremendous support of our donors that the RCM will continue to thrive as the top performing arts institution in the world, offering the highest-quality training to the musicians of the future.
Founded by entrepreneur and philanthropist Sir Alec Reed, the Big Give Christmas Challenge helps UK registered charities raise thousands of pounds for their causes. Since the Big Give launched the campaign in 2008, the Christmas Challenge has raised over £173 million for thousands of charity projects.
For further information on supporting the RCM Scholarships Fund, please contact Alice Edwards, Development Manager (Philanthropy), on 020 7591 4371 or at alice.edwards@rcm.ac.uk.
