Rethinking Moves Management: The 5 Stages of Building Lasting Donor Relationships

Moves management helps nonprofits turn prospects into major gift donors — and keeps teams focused on the right ones. From spending time on the wrong donors to pursuing too many donors at once to rushing the ask, there are many ways fundraisers and their leaders can lose sight of these fundraising cycle basics.

To help surface the benefits of this tested fundraising framework, Ashley Oates and Lauren Enlow — both senior strategic consultants at Blackbaud — led the session “Moves Management in the Pursuit of Precious Gems” on Oct. 8 during bbcon 2025 in Philadelphia.

Enlow, a former frontline fundraiser, recalled the stress and anxiety fundraisers felt before nonprofit quarterly fundraising team meetings where leadership labeled fundraisers’ success — reaching visit and dollars-raised goals — via traffic light colors: green for goals met, yellow for goals almost met and red for goals not even close.

“Imagine a brand new fundraiser coming into your organization,” Enlow said. “They're still building their portfolio. They're still trying to find relationships to even start building. How long do they stay in the red? And they were told, ‘If you stay in the red longer than six months, it's a problem.’”

Instead of scare tactics, the five stages of moves management can serve as a philosophy for accountability, clarity and genuine donor relationships. The shared language — identification, qualification, cultivation, solicitation and stewardship — remains the backbone of major gifts fundraising. When paired with technology — such as dashboards that flag donors most likely to give and automate portfolio tracking — moves management becomes easier to manage and measure.

Here’s a refresher on each stage of moves management.

1. Identification: Finding the Right Prospects

The first step is about focus, not wealth. The identification stage separates prospects from the broader pool of constituents, Oates said. But wealth alone doesn’t make someone a good fit.

“Not everyone that is wealthy in your database is going to be a good prospect,” she said. “... Good identification, in moves management, is supported by having an agreed-upon North Star.”

To start, the prospect must not have been contacted previously. Predictive analytics and wealth indicators can help determine that “North Star” for organizations. Then, setting up tags in your donor database will allow those identified to be segmented out of mass email blasts and mailings. A disciplined identification process, she said, also prevents portfolio bloat.

Enlow added that transparency between fundraisers and researchers builds confidence in the process.

“Once I understood what the researcher was looking at and why they were choosing to put people into my portfolio,” she said. “I had more trust that what was in there was what I needed it to be, and I was more willing to listen to the recommendations that were being made.”

2. Qualification: Focusing on Fit and Readiness

After identification comes qualification, at which point each prospect is assigned to a major gift officer to determine fit and readiness. This stage begins as soon as outreach starts — and should move quickly, Oates said, identifying five main questions to consider:

1. Are they philanthropic?
2. Are they inclined to be philanthropic toward your organization?
3. What is their capacity for a major gift?
4. What area or cause at your organization are they most interested in supporting?
5. What is the timeline to make the ask?

It’s just as important to disqualify donors. Too often, fundraisers let names linger in their portfolio. Oates urged teams to normalize the 120-person portfolios, removing unfit and unresponsive prospects from the pipeline. Even those not quite ready can be delayed and revisited at a later time. While that number could vary by organization, the goal is to keep portfolios small and nimble, she said.

“Most organizations that we work with have a large pool of middle donors that are all scoring well with predictive models, but there are not enough officers to have them all be assigned,” Oates said. “So for this reason, it's important that we are setting expectations for how long officers should be attempting to contact someone before it's time to disqualify or move on.”

3. Cultivation: Building Relationships With Purpose

If identification and qualification are the science of fundraising, cultivation is the art, Enlow said. Too many gift officers mistake ongoing contact for progress. Though building a relationship is a big factor here, fundraisers shouldn’t forget the purpose of the process. Enlow urged fundraisers to approach cultivation as a roadmap.

“So I can't sit here and be friends with you all day long, having a cup of tea, even though we might like that,” she said, “but we need to be thinking about — how am I moving this relationship to get to the space where I'm going to ask you for that money?”

She also encouraged consistent collaboration. Leadership, as well as prospect research and data teams, should commit to prospect meetings to help major gift officers find new ways to engage major gift prospects, especially when a relationship becomes stagnant. Cultivation takes time — sometimes years — but Enlow urged leaders not to weaponize time frames.

“Our donors sometimes need to dip their toe in and test the waters and see how we are as an organization before they get to the space where they're going to say, ‘Yep, I'm giving you everything,’” Enlow said. “We can't hold our fundraisers accountable for how long it takes them to get to the big ask, especially if you were seeing the little things coming along the way.”

4. Solicitation: Making the Ask When the Moment Is Right

When cultivation is done well, solicitation often happens naturally. This transition between stages rarely follows a linear script. For instance, a fundraiser could mention a new program or service that interests a donor, creating an opportunity for a spontaneous ask. 

“The donor’s, like, ‘Yes, this is the thing. I've been waiting for this,’” Enlow said. “And now the conversation completely shifted. You thought you were coming in there to cultivate a relationship, and now you're actually planning for making the ask.”

Since fundraisers don’t always receive an immediate “yes,” it’s important to document every ask to ensure clarity across teams — and for future people in your role.

“I will admit it,” she said, “we are not the best when it comes to documenting things, but when you get to the solicitation stage, everything needs to be documented, so everybody knows this is what the ask was. This is what was agreed upon.”

5. Stewardship: Sustaining Relationships Beyond the Gift

Stewardship, Enlow said, is both a thank-you and a strategy for what comes next. Often, that’s returning to identification again or skipping straight to qualification. Other times, they remain at the stewardship stage.

As a frontline fundraiser, Enlow had a widow on her caseload who had made a transformative gift in honor of her husband. However, in subsequent visits, the donor requested help buying plane tickets and paying bills, so Enlow eventually realized this donor wasn’t going to give again.

“So we had to have the conversation with my researcher that we were moving her to permanent stewardship because we still wanted her to get the information. We still wanted her to know that we care,” Enlow said. “… I know you have gift officers that have those people in their portfolios, and they're not letting them go.”

Whether powered by technology or teamwork, moves management works best when it’s rooted in shared definitions.

“Moves management creates a shared language that allows everyone to be reading from the same playbook and applying the same rubric to their prospects,” Oates said.