Organizers of the The Big Give SA aren’t giving up. After the website for donating to Tuesday’s non-profit fundraiser crashed, organizers made some changes that should allow fundraising to resume from 6 a.m. until 8 p.m. Wednesday.
The Big Give SA is an annual 24- hour campaign that raises money online for area non-profits. This year about 1,000 organizations in 14 counties around San Antonio participated, their names appearing on a website that was tied to a server managing donations to nonprofits in some 80 other cities as well. That’s more cities than have previously been linked together for this national day of giving, and the system couldn’t handle it.
John Burnam, coordinating consultant for the event, says the server crashed about nine hours into the event than began at midnight.
“All of these sites from Seattle; to Tampa Bay, Florida; over to Charleston; and down to The Big Give, were all shut down at the same time because of the volume of donors that were going through the system.”
Burnam says The Big Give SA was on track to reach the goal of $6 million in donations when people couldn’t give through the website. The effort generated just $1.1 million before organizers called a halt to Tuesday’s effort, and decided to resume Wednesday.
Burnam says the technical kinks should be ironed out.
“They’re de-coupling us from the rest of the system, those 80 communities that are participating right now. We are confident we’ll be better able to handle the transactions that come to the site.”
Burnham says it’s unclear whether The Big Give SA can still reach this year’s $6 million fundraising goal for area non-profits, but it’s going to try.