Feeling stuck with major gifts fundraising strategy? Before you pivot to individual giving, learn how to tell the difference between a reactive move and an intentional one.
If you’re not seeing the results you expect with your major gifts fundraising, the pressure to show progress can push you toward a pivot before you’ve had a chance to fully think it through. You might have a few promising prospects, but progress feels slow. So the question rolling around usually looks something like, “Do we stay the course, or pivot to reaching more people with smaller gifts?”
We recently heard from a client in that exact spot. They had held a handful of one-on-one meetings with potential major donors but weren’t getting any traction. The feedback they heard was that people were overwhelmed, busy, or didn’t have the capacity to give at a significant level. Because of this, the Executive Director decided to pivot and shared that the organization was going to focus on 100 donors giving $100. The logic was simple: if they can’t secure one or two big gifts, they’ll focus on getting a lot of smaller ones.
At first glance, this approach seems practical. Individual giving allows you to cast a wide net, engage more people, and raise revenue quickly. Yes and, if you pause and think a little deeper, it raises a few critical questions like:
Are you speaking to the right people?
Are you solving the funding problem or just avoiding the hard work of major gift relationships?
When does it make sense to pivot, versus staying the course with a small group of high-potential prospects?
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Understanding the Two Paths
Before we dig into the nuances and details of pivoting a fundraising strategy, let’s first get on the same page about definition.
Here’s how we think about these two funding sources:
- Individual Giving focuses on reach, awareness, and volume. It’s about connecting with as many people as possible through email campaigns, social media channels, and events. The goal is to grow your audience and keep your organization top-of-mind. Success is measured in numbers: email opens, event attendance, and dollars from many small donors.
- Major Gifts, by contrast, focus on trust, alignment, and depth. This approach is about having multiple meaningful conversations with the right people so you can learn their values, motivations, and vision for impact. A single strong relationship can catalyze transformational support, opening doors to networks, partnerships, and long-term stability.
Both paths are valid and necessary at different points in an organization’s journey. But the strategies, timelines, and outcomes are very different.
Why Can’t You Do Both?
In an ideal world, you wouldn’t have to choose. A fully mature fundraising program includes both major gifts that provide depth and stability, and individual giving that builds community and broadens your base of support.
The reality for most small to mid-sized nonprofits, however, is that capacity makes true parallel execution difficult. With lean teams, limited bandwidth, and no dedicated development staff, trying to do everything at once often means doing nothing particularly well. At some point, you have to make a choice about where to focus your energy (for now).
And from our experience, understanding which path you’re organization is on, and why, is key to creating intentional, sustainable fundraising.
The Nuance Worth Mentioning When it Comes to Shifting Your Fundraising Approach
Major gifts are compelling for good reason. They bring with them a potential for transformational, high-impact support, and knowing that a single relationship could change the trajectory of your organization. That incentive makes them worth pursuing.
And then the timeline reveals itself. Major gift fundraising isn’t a process that moves from introduction to ask in a single conversation. It’s a series of intentional touchpoints built over time, where trust deepens gradually and the relationship has to develop before the invitation to give ever enters the picture. That reality can catch even the most experienced leaders off guard.
When expectations meet that timeline, frustration is a natural response. And frustration, especially when you’re already stretched thin and under pressure to show results, is fertile ground for reactive decision-making. The pivot away from major gifts often doesn’t happen because the strategy was wrong. It happens because the strategy was harder or slower than anticipated, and in that moment, individual giving feels like relief.
That’s precisely what makes this decision worth examining carefully. Pivoting isn’t inherently wrong. There are moments when shifting strategy is exactly the right call. The question isn’t whether to pivot. It’s whether you’re changing with intention, or simply responding to the discomfort of a process that hasn’t finished working yet.
What Reactive Pivots Often Look Like (And Why They Happen)
For many nonprofits, individual giving is the natural starting point because it’s accessible, simultaneously builds awareness, and generates early momentum. All of that makes sense, especially in those early stages of building a fundraising strategy.
The pattern worth examining is what happens after that initial stage.
You gain some traction and make a deliberate decision to begin pursuing major gifts. You understand the potential and begin to invest time in identifying prospects, scheduling meetings, and beginning conversations. Except the results don’t come as quickly as anticipated, so the commitment to that strategy starts to erode. Individual giving re-enters the picture because major giving isn’t meeting expectations.
Part of what makes this so predictable is that organizations often carry the same metrics into major gift fundraising that they used to measure individual giving success. Email opens, event attendance, and dollars raised quickly are the markers that have historically signaled progress. But major gift fundraising operates on an entirely different timeline and logic. It can’t be measured in the same way, because the currency isn’t volume. It’s trust. And trust doesn’t easily show up in a dashboard.
When the metrics don’t move, it’s not hard to come to the conclusion that your major gifts strategy isn’t working, and it’s better to go back to individual giving. That’s the reactive pivot. And the distinction matters, because intentional and reactive pivots look identical on the surface but come from very different places.
I want to be clear – individual giving isn’t the problem.
It helps grow awareness, expand your donor base, and bring new supporters into your mission. It’s excellent for community-building and engaging people at scale. The challenge comes when it becomes the default fallback because you’re only chasing numbers. And that transactional approach is an exceptionally hard cycle to break.
When Your Major Gift Strategy Isn’t Working, And What That Might Actually Mean
Before you change course, it’s worth pausing on a more specific question: why isn’t your major gift strategy getting traction? “It’s not working” can mean a variety of different things, and the answer shapes whether you need to pivot your strategy entirely or simply strengthen your execution.
In our experience, when major gift efforts stall, it usually comes down to one of a few root causes.
1. Prospect alignment
You may be pursuing people who aren’t the right fit. Donors whose values, interests, or capacity don’t align closely enough with your mission can often result in conversations feel forced and awkward. Because of that, follow-up loses momentum and the relationship never quite takes hold.
Dig in even further with this post: Who Are You Really Talking To? How to Define Your Ideal Donor and Beneficiary
2. Message clarity
Even with the right prospects, if your organization’s story isn’t clear and compelling, it’s difficult to invite someone into a meaningful conversation about giving. Donors who feel confused about what you do, why it matters, or what their gift would actually accomplish tend to disengage because the path forward isn’t clear to them.
Dig in even further with these posts: An Easy-to-Follow Brand Strategy for Nonprofits Guide, How to Write a Case for Support That Holds Up: Strategy, Connection, and Communication
3. Process
Major gift fundraising requires a series of intentional touchpoints over time. Without a clear cultivation sequence, it’s easy for momentum to stall simply because there’s no defined next step. What can feel like donor disinterest is sometimes just a lack of structure on the organization’s side.
Dig in even further with this post: Designing Your Donor Engagement Journey: Turning Connection Into a Strategy, Why Case Statement Validation Matters More Than You Think
Understanding which of these is at play matters because the response is likely different. A prospect alignment issue calls for revisiting who you’re talking to. A messaging issue calls for clarifying your story. A process issue calls for building a simple cultivation framework you can follow consistently.
And it’s worth noting that none of these requires a full-on change in fundraising strategy. Instead, it’s about pausing long enough to diagnose the real problem so you can address it directly.
What Intentional Change Looks Like
An intentional fundraising pivot isn’t driven by frustration, timeline pressure, or the discomfort of a strategy that feels slow. It comes from a deliberate assessment of where you are, what’s working, and what the evidence is actually telling you.
In practice, that means pausing long enough to ask honest questions before changing course. Not questions designed to justify a decision you’ve already made, but questions that are genuinely open to the answer being in either direction. Sometimes the process confirms that it’s not thr right time for major gifts. Other times, it reveals that the strategy is sound and what needs to change is the execution, the timeline, or the metrics being used to measure progress.
An intentional pivot also looks different in terms of how the conversation is being explored, and with whom. Rather than a unilateral call made under pressure, it’s a conversation with your team, your Board, or a trusted advisor that surfaces the real drivers behind the potential change. It has the space to stress-test the reasoning before committing to a new direction.
And perhaps most importantly, an intentional pivot comes with a clear rationale that connects back to your long-term fundraising goals. Not “this feels more manageable right now” but “here is what we’ve learned, here is what the evidence suggests, and here is why this shift moves us closer to where we’re trying to go.”
Pause Before You Pivot: Questions to Consider
As I’ve reiterated throughout this entire post, it’s worth stepping back before you shift. The goal isn’t to talk yourself out of a pivot. Rather, it’s to make sure the decision you’re making is one you’re choosing with intention, not one you’re defaulting to under pressure.
If you’re wondering whether moving away from major gifts is intentional or reactive, here are some questions to sit with:
- Have we identified why our major gift strategy stalled, or are we assuming it isn’t working because the timeline feels long?
- Are we measuring progress with the right metrics, or are we applying individual giving benchmarks to a relationship-based strategy?
- Does this change support our long-term fundraising goals, or is it about relieving short-term pressure?
- Is this decision being made collaboratively, or is it being driven by one person in a moment of frustration?
- Have we given this strategy enough time to cultivate, and do we know what “enough time” actually looks like for our major gift fundraising efforts?
- If we make this pivot, what does returning to major gifts look like six months from now?
- How will this choice affect donor trust and experience over time?
These questions aren’t meant to slow you down. They’re meant to create enough space between the pressure and the decision that you can respond with clarity rather than react with urgency. A pivot made from that place is one you can build on. A pivot made without it often just delays the harder work.
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.
