Your next major donor may already be connected to your organization. Learn how to turn individual donors into major donors, ready to deepen their relationship with your work.
In almost every conversation we have with Executive Directors about fundraising, the question is some version of, “How do we find more donors?” “How do we tap into new networks?” or “How do we get our Board to connect us with their network?”
These are reasonable questions, especially if you’re wanting to put more emphasis on major gifts fundraising.
Yes and, what’s notably absent from those conversations is any real curiosity about the donors that have already given.
Even thinking about your own experience – how often do you ask, “How do we deepen the existing relationships?” “How do we stay meaningfully connected between asks?” or “How are we being intentional about growing the trust, and by extension, the giving, of the people who have already said yes?”
We see the tendency to go after something new, rather than cultivate and build on what’s already there. It can be a both/and, but the pull toward acquisition is strong, and the relationship that already exists often becomes an afterthought. Which raises the question at the heart of this post: are you overlooking your next major donor because you’re too busy looking for someone new?
Table of Contents
Why the Gift Isn’t the Goal
There’s a pretty consistent process that most organizations go through when it comes to fundraising, especially for major gifts:
- Be introduced to a prospect
- Cultivate the relationship, most often quickly
- Make the ask
- Receive the gift
- Send a thank-you note
- Move on to finding or connecting with the next prospect
In this model, the gift is treated as the culmination of the work. And it’s reinforced by what organizations measure. Think number of new prospects, total dollars raised, number of major donors, and gifts closed.
On one hand, they are all absolutely useful metrics. But on the other hand, they tell you nothing about what’s happening to the relationship after the gift. Does a donor feel more connected to your organization, more informed about your work, more valued for their support outside of the dollars given? Or, do they feel like a transaction that has been completed and put on the shelf until the next ask?
The Individual Donors You’re Likely Not Paying Attention To
This pattern plays out most visibly with individual donors.
Want to read more about how we define different types fundraising? Click to read Types of Nonprofit Fundraising: Why Major Gifts Matter.
Someone gives $25 or $50 or $100. They receive a thank-you email, or maybe a hand-written letter. They get added to your general newsletter that goes out once per month. And then, for most organizations, that’s where the relationship ends.
There isn’t an intentional system for what comes after the gift, so the relationship drifts. Individual donors stay where they are, giving at the same level, feeling vaguely connected but never truly engaged. And you keep looking outward for new people, unaware of what’s quietly going dormant in your own backyard.
Let’s be clear – we’re not saying this is an intentional choice that means you don’t care about that individual. Instead, what we see is that there isn’t a system for bringing connection into individual gifts because the focus is so heavily weighted towards finding the next major gift prospect. Capacity is a continuous challenge for nonprofit leaders, and it’s understandable to have a fully automated, mostly hands-off approach to individual donors.
That being said, this hands-off approach completely misses the fact that individual donors have already done of the most challenging parts of major gifts fundraising: they’ve said ‘yes’ to your mission. They believe in your work enough to make a financial commitment, which is not a small feat. It’s actually the foundation that a major gifts conversation is built on.
Shifting the Goal Line
What if instead, this traditional model didn’t end with the gift? Instead, the gift is actually the beginning of the next phase of the relationship – one where you lead with curiosity, ask questions, and let the donor tell you what they want. They’ve already raised their hand to say they financially commit to the work. Now the question becomes, “How do they want to stay engaged and deepen that initial connection?”
If you’re feeling stuck in the cycle of always needing new major gifts prospects, it’s worth sitting with when you last took a careful look at your individual donor base. Not to assess their capacity, but to genuinely ask, “Who here already has a relationship with us, and have we ever invested in deepening it?”
Building Systems for Relationship-Building After an Individual Gift
Knowing that individual donors might be a good place to tap into for major gifts is one thing. But actually having a system in place to act on is another.
What we hear most often is that you likely have 50 to 100 individuals (or more!) giving at various levels, ranging from $5, $50 or even $100. Your plate is overflowing, you have a small team, and way more priorities than hours in the day.
So the idea of deepening relationships with each individual donor isn’t realistic, and even attempting to do is wasted effort. But if it’s not reaching out to each person and cultivating a relationship with them directly, how do you build a system that helps identify who might want to engage further?
This is where intention matters more than bandwidth. The goal isn’t to steward everyone equally, but put a process in place that helps identify which donors are already signaling that they want more. And the recommendations that we make are things that aren’t too labor-intensive to put in place:
- Who gives consistently, even if not at a significant level yet?
- Who has a warm, existing connection to someone in your organization?
- Who seems genuinely engaged to a particular program or aspect of your mission?
The good news is those signals are likely already in your donor base, they just need to be uncovered.
We recommend working through three areas to identify your starting list. Depending on your capacity and the size of your team, you’re looking to surface somewhere between five and 25 people worth investing in further.
Step 1: Look at Past Giving
Start with your existing donor database (and if you don’t have one, consider this your gentle nudge to make one). Look for donors who have given consistently over the last few years, even if it’s not at a significant level. Consistency tells you that that individual is choosing to support your work, year after year, without being heavily cultivated.
There’s a story I heard on a podcast that illustrates this well. A nonprofit leader called to personally thank and chit chat with someone who had given $100 every year for more than two decades. It was a no-ask call; just genuine gratitude. After that conversation, the donor made a $100,000 gift. The capacity was always there – these relationships just needed someone to pay attention to it.
Step 2: See if There’s an Existing Connection
Before reaching out cold, it’s worth asking whether a warmer path already exists. Talk to your Board members, committee members, and team. Does anyone have a personal relationship with someone on your individual donor list? A shared history, a mutual connection, or even a friendly familiarity can change the entire tone of an outreach. If that connection exists and you didn’t know about it, that’s actually good news. It means the relationship already has something real to build on, and the next step is simply deciding to lean into it.
Step 3: Look for Mission-Specific Engagement
Pay attention to how individual donors are already engaging with your organization beyond their gift. Do they only open emails or click on links that are related to a specific program or focus area? Have they attended a particular event or raised their hand for a volunteer opportunity tied to one part of your work? These are signifiers that someone has a specific interest, and perhaps there’s a genuine connection to something particular within it. That specificity is valuable because it can help guide you on where to start the conversation.
Once you’ve worked through these three areas, you’ll have a small, intentional group of donors who are already showing you, in their own quiet ways, that they may be open to more.
Building the Relationship After the Gift
Once you’ve identified who to invest in, the approach matters as much as the intention. And this is where many organizations overcomplicate it.
Relationship-building after an individual gift doesn’t have to be this elaborate stewardship plan or a series of formal meetings. Here are three ways to get started.
Make a curiosity-led phone call
Reach out with no ask attached. The goal of this conversation isn’t to set up a future solicitation, but to understand what lights this particular donor up. Questions like “What drew you to this work?” or “What about our mission resonates most with you right now?” create space for the donor to tell you what matters to them. Leading with curiosity creates an opportunity for the donor show you what the relationship can become.
Send a quick personal email
Because you asked questions and learned more specifics about what draws that donor to your organization, you now have something to follow up on. If they mentioned a specific focus area or program, send them something related; an article you read, something you recently heard, or a story from the field that connects to what they shared. Keep it brief and personal. The message underneath the email is: I heard you, I thought of you, and I wanted to reach out.
Ask for their feedback, and follow up on it
Asking for a donor’s perspective is one of the most underused trust-building tools in relationship-building. It tells the donor that their opinion matters to your organization beyond their financial contribution, and it gives you a natural reason to follow up. Whether to share how their feedback was incorporated, or to explain your thinking if it wasn’t, the follow-up deepens the relationship because it makes the donor a participant, not just a supporter.
Intentional relationship building with individual donors isn’t something that needs to happen all at once. And it doesn’t need to be formal or elaborate to be effective. What matters is that each connection point is personal, consistent, and not tied to a financial ask.
It’s worth noting that some donors will stay exactly where they are, and that’s fine. Others will signal, through their engagement and their responses, that they want to go deeper. That’s the individual who may eventually become a major donor, not because you identified their capacity and moved them through a pipeline, but because you built something real, and they chose to invest more deeply in it.
And that’s what we hope you take away today: That before you ask your Board or team for new introductions, turn inward. Because your next major donor may be someone who’s already been giving to your organization for years, waiting to be asked a different kind of question.
Kelly is a passionate brand strategist and designer who loves supporting nonprofits on their mission to do more good work in this world. She’s seen firsthand the power of creating a consistent and cohesive brand – from building better connections with your audience to streamlining marketing and fundraising efforts.
