If 80 percent of fundraisers want to raise major gifts but only 43 percent meet their goals, the gap is not ambition — it is process. According to MarketSmart's benchmark research, 80 percent of nonprofits prioritize major gifts, yet fewer than half actually hit their targets, and 49 percent of fundraisers say they are actively disappointed with their current major gift pipeline.
For small nonprofits, the gap is even wider — because most do not have a dedicated major gifts officer, a wealth screening tool, or a structured pipeline. They have a spreadsheet, a few wealthy contacts, and a hope that someone will eventually write a big check.
Hope is not a strategy. Moves management is. This post walks through what moves management is, why it matters even more for a small shop than a big one, and the specific steps you can take in your CRM this month to build a major gift pipeline that actually moves donors forward.
What "moves management" actually means
Moves management is the discipline of tracking every meaningful interaction with a prospective major donor and intentionally planning the next "move" that brings them closer to a transformational gift. The concept has been the backbone of major gifts fundraising for decades, and it boils down to five stages:
- Identification — Spotting potential major donors through giving history, peer referrals, or wealth indicators
- Qualification — Confirming the prospect is philanthropic, has capacity, and is inclined toward your mission
- Cultivation — Building the relationship through personal contact, mission immersion, and listening
- Solicitation — Making a specific, personalized ask aligned with the donor's interests
- Stewardship — Demonstrating impact and deepening the relationship after the gift
The whole point of the framework is that donors do not jump from "stranger" to "$25,000 gift." They progress through stages, and your CRM should track exactly where each one sits and what the next move should be.
Why it matters more for small nonprofits than you think
There is a common misconception that moves management is a "big shop" practice — something for universities and hospitals with major gifts teams. The data says otherwise.
The 80/20 rule (often closer to 90/10 in modern fundraising) means that for most nonprofits, 80 to 90 percent of revenue comes from 10 to 20 percent of donors. If you raise $500,000 per year, somewhere around $400,000 is coming from maybe 20 to 30 donors. Those donors deserve — and require — a different kind of attention than your $25 first-time online donors.
Small nonprofits also have a structural advantage that big shops do not: the executive director or board chair can personally know every major donor by name. The challenge is not relationship — it is systemization. Without a pipeline, the relationship lives in the ED's head, which means:
- When the ED leaves, the relationships often leave with them
- Asks are made inconsistently, often only at the year-end appeal
- Donors who are ready to upgrade get overlooked because no one tracked the signal
- Board members do not know which donors to thank, call, or invite
A simple moves management practice solves all four problems with a couple of CRM fields and a 30-minute weekly habit.
The numbers that change how you think about major gifts
A few benchmarks worth memorizing before you build your pipeline:
- The median definition of a "major gift" across nonprofits is $5,000 to $9,999, but the most common (modal) threshold is $1,000 to $2,499 (MarketSmart benchmark). For a small nonprofit, anything that is 10 times your average gift is a reasonable threshold.
- It takes six months to two years to secure a major gift, from first qualification to closed gift. This is not a quick-win channel — it is a compounding asset.
- For small nonprofits raising under $10M, the median active major donor portfolio is only about 10 prospects, not the 100 to 150 you hear from large-shop literature. Small and nimble beats big and stagnant.
- Including more people in the solicitation — a board member alongside the ED, for example — makes fundraisers more likely to meet their goals (MarketSmart).
- Donors are increasingly willing to give: an Imagine Canada poll found 65 percent of Canadians planned to donate during the 2024 holiday season, up from 49 percent in 2023, and sector trust climbed to 82 percent.
The takeaway: your major donor pool is smaller than you think, the cycle is longer than you want, and the timing in 2026 is genuinely favorable. That combination rewards organizations with a real process.
Six actionable steps to build (or rebuild) your major donor pipeline
You do not need a $40,000 wealth screening tool to start. You need a clear pipeline structure, a few CRM fields, and a weekly habit.
1. Define your major gift threshold. Use Amy Eisenstein's classic method: pull your top 10 individual donors from the last 12 months (excluding outliers, foundations, and corporations), average their giving, and round up to the nearest $5,000. If the average is $8,500, your threshold is $10,000. Some organizations use a tiered structure — mid-major at $1,000, major at $5,000, transformational at $25,000.
2. Identify your top 20. Run the 80/20 analysis StratusLIVE describes: export all donor giving for the last 12 to 24 months, sort descending, calculate a running cumulative total, and find the donors who collectively make up 80 percent of your revenue. Tag them in your CRM as "Major Donors" or "Top 20." This is your starting portfolio — it should be small.
3. Add four CRM fields to every prospect. Kindsight recommends tracking four fields at minimum for each prospect: giving capacity (how much they can give), target gift (how much you plan to ask for), current stage (identification through stewardship), and next move with a date and owner. Without "next move with a date and owner," your pipeline is a list, not a pipeline.
4. Disqualify aggressively. This is the step small nonprofits skip and it costs them dearly. As NonProfit PRO notes, normalizing 120-person portfolios means removing unfit and unresponsive prospects so your team can focus on the 10 to 25 who are actually movable. If a prospect has not responded to three meaningful touches, demote them out of the active pipeline. They can be re-engaged later.
5. Run a 30-minute weekly pipeline review. Every Friday, open your CRM, look at every prospect with a "next move" date in the past or this week, and either complete the move or reschedule it with a specific reason. This single habit separates organizations that close major gifts from those that do not. The pipeline only works if someone looks at it every week.
6. Involve your board strategically. Board members are your most underused major gift asset. Assign each board member two or three prospects to cultivate alongside the ED — a phone call, a coffee, a personal note. Track every interaction in the CRM. The data consistently shows that team solicitations close at higher rates than solo asks.
Regional Insight: Canada vs. U.S.
For Canadian charities, two things to keep in mind when building a major donor program.
First, CRA donation receipting rules are stricter than the U.S. IRS equivalent. Major gifts often involve appreciated securities, gifts-in-kind, or pledges paid over multiple years — and the CRA has specific rules about fair market value, the eligible amount when there is an advantage to the donor (e.g., a gala dinner), and how to handle multi-year pledges. Build the receipt workflow into your moves management process from day one, not after the gift comes in.
Second, the Canadian sector has a strong public trust environment to work with right now. Imagine Canada's 2024 data shows trust in the charitable sector at 82 percent — exceptionally high. Lean into it. Canadian major donors are particularly responsive to transparency about overhead, governance, and impact metrics. Make your impact reporting CRA-grade and donor-grade simultaneously.
U.S. nonprofits should not assume the same baseline trust — recent surveys show U.S. trust in charities sitting lower and more polarized. That makes transparency and impact reporting even more critical for U.S. solicitations.
What success looks like 12 months from now
If you implement this well, here is what your CRM should show 12 months from launch:
- A named portfolio of 10 to 25 active major donor prospects, each with a current stage and a dated next move
- A board-engaged cultivation plan with 2 to 3 prospects per board member
- A clear major gift threshold and tiered ask amounts documented and known by the team
- Documented disqualifications — prospects you intentionally removed from the pipeline
- A weekly pipeline review on the calendar that actually happens
- At least one closed major gift attributable to the process, not luck
You probably will not hit all of these in 12 months. Hit four of them and you are ahead of most small nonprofits in the sector.
Conclusion: From a list to a pipeline
The difference between a list of wealthy contacts and a major donor pipeline is one thing: intentional movement. A list is static. A pipeline moves.
Every prospect in your CRM is either moving forward, moving backward, or moving nowhere. The job of moves management is to make sure that, every single week, you know which is which — and you are doing something about it.
Most small nonprofits will never build this discipline. The ones that do will quietly outperform their peers for years, because the compounding value of a well-stewarded major donor relationship dwarfs almost everything else a small shop can do.
Pick the one step you can do this week. Most likely, that step is the 80/20 analysis — because you cannot manage a portfolio you have not yet defined.
