UPDATE, 4:40 p.m. As of 4:00 this afternoon, The Big Give S.A. has suspended donations on its website, but plans to resume doing so tomorrow, from 6:00 a.m. - 8:00 p.m. During a press conference, San Antonio Area Foundation President and CEO Dennis Noll announced, "We are hopeful that tomorrow we will once again be able to accept donations." Big Give S.A. Executive Director Scott McAninch added, "while the website won't be accepting donations, you can still find nonprofits and their websites" through the Big Give S.A.'s search function, and encouraged people to donate to nonprofits directly.
The giving has been extended! Due to national software issues, you can still donate TOMORROW from 6am-8pm! We appreciate your support!
— The Big Give SA - #BigGive2020 (@TheBigGiveSA) May 3, 2016
The original post follows:
It appears lots of folks around the country are in a giving mood today. So many, in fact, that it overwhelmed the system designed to handle donation processing at 80 cities across the nation, including San Antonio and The Big Give S.A.
John Burnham, Coordinating Consultant for The Big Give S.A., said by phone that software company Kimbia appears not to have anticipated the volume of donations it would receive.
Around 9:00 this morning, the donation links on the Big Give site went down, as well as the Leaderboard, a tally board that non-profits look at to see how many donations are coming in. By the early afternoon, the site was back up, but working slower than it should in order to handle the heavy load. Users may experience a delay as they wait for the donation form to pop up.
Burnam said they’re consulting with Kimbia and will make a decision at 4:00 today whether or not to extend The Big Give S.A. to Wednesday or not, and whether to continue using Kimbia at all, or simply encourage donors to go to individual organizations directly to make their gifts.
