Stop "Winging" Your Major Gift Strategy

If your plan major gift strategy is basically… “keep following up and hope they respond”… you don’t have a strategy.

You have anxiety. And, now I have anxiety.

And if that sentence stung a little? You’re my people.

Because mission-driven fundraisers don’t avoid major gifts because they don’t care…They avoid them because it feels like walking into fog with a flashlight that’s dying.

So here’s what I want to give you today: a simple framework to make every donor in your portfolio feel clear, calm, and trackable. No guessing. No spiraling. No “what do I even say?”

Here’s the real problem: Most major gift strategies don’t stall because donors don’t care.

They stall because the fundraiser is holding too many open loops in their head.

Raise your hand if you've asked yourself any of these questions in the past few days:

“Did I email them?”
“Was that the person who said they’d meet in February?”
“Wait, did they tell me their kid just started college?”
“Should I be asking already?”

It’s not strategy. It’s mental clutter.

So what do we do? We default to random check-ins. We send the “just circling back” email. We wait for the perfect time to ask. Or we avoid them entirely because we’re afraid we’ll say the wrong thing.

But donors don’t move forward through vibes. They move forward through progression.

Major gifts happen when you lead someone through a sequence of small, clear steps. And if you don’t define the sequence, you’ll keep “following up” forever.

Here’s the framework.

Step one: Name the stage.
Every major gift donor is in one of three stages:

Discovery — you’re learning what they care about.
Engagement — you’re deepening trust and alignment.
Invitation — you’re inviting a decision.

If you don’t name the stage, you’ll pick the wrong action.

Step two: Choose the next move.
No matter what stage your major gift donor in, your next move is one of three:

Clarify — you’re learning, asking, getting the truth.
Confirm — you reflect back what you heard and show you were paying attention.
Commit — you invite a decision: a meeting, a proposal review, a gift conversation.

That’s it. Clarify. Confirm. Commit.

Step three: Calendar it within seven days.

If the next move isn’t scheduled, it’s not a next move. It’s a wish.

So your job is to pick the stage, choose the move, and put it on the calendar within seven days.

This works because it reduces emotional decision fatigue. It turns major gifts from constant pressure in your brain
into a set of simple, repeatable micro-actions.

And when you get consistent, donors feel that. They feel led. They feel safe. They trust you more.

Go show up for your major gift donors.