Moves Management Made Simple: A Cultivation System Any Size Shop Can Run
Most fundraising offices have a list of donors and a vague sense of which ones matter. Somebody on the team can usually name the big givers off the top of their head. What they often cannot tell you is what happens next with any one of them — when the last real conversation took place, what that donor actually cares about, or what the plan is to deepen the relationship before the next ask. The names sit in a database, and outreach happens in bursts whenever a campaign deadline forces it.
That gap, between having donors and having a plan for each one, is exactly what moves management is built to close. The phrase sounds like jargon, and in a lot of consultant decks it gets dressed up until it feels like something only a 20-person development team could pull off. Here is what I have learned after sitting in the fundraising seat myself: the core idea is simple, and a one-person shop can run it with a spreadsheet and an hour a week.
What Moves Management Actually Is
At its heart, moves management is a structured way of moving a donor from one stage of the relationship to the next, one intentional step at a time. Each of those steps is a "move" — a phone call, a coffee, a handwritten note, a tour of your program. None of them is dramatic on its own. Strung together with a little direction, they turn a name on a list into a person who trusts you and wants to give.
The relationship usually travels through five recognizable donor stages. You identify someone who might care about your mission. You qualify them, which simply means finding out whether they actually have the interest and the capacity to give at a meaningful level. You cultivate them by building a real relationship over time. You solicit, which is the ask. And then you steward, which is how you thank and report back so the next gift feels natural rather than cold. That sequence is the whole donor lifecycle, and almost every healthy donor pipeline follows it whether the team names it or not.
The reason this matters is not complexity. It is direction. Random outreach treats every supporter the same and hopes something sticks. A cultivation system gives each relationship a next step and a reason for it. And this is not a failure of effort on anyone's part. Most small teams are buried, wearing the development hat alongside the marketing hat and the event hat. When you are that stretched, the donors who do not shout get quiet, and the quiet ones are often the ones with the most to give.
Picture a donor who gave $1,000 after a gala two years ago and has given nothing since. On most lists she is just a lapsed name. Run her through the lens of moves management and the picture changes. She is sitting in qualification, waiting for someone to find out whether that gala gift was a one-time impulse or the first sign of real interest. The next move is not another mass appeal. It is a five-minute phone call to thank her and ask what drew her in. That single, ordinary touch is the kind of move that turns a forgotten name back into an active prospect — and it costs you almost nothing but the intention to make it.
Building a System You Can Actually Run
The first decision is how many relationships you can honestly carry. Fundraisers call this a portfolio, and the single biggest mistake I see small shops make is trying to actively manage everyone. You cannot. If you are part-time on development, cap your active list at something like 40 to 50 households. If fundraising is your full-time job, you might carry 100 to 150. Everyone else still gets your newsletter and your year-end appeal — they simply are not in the hands-on donor cultivation rotation yet.
Once you have your names, the system itself can live in a single spreadsheet or a simple CRM. Every donor gets a row, and every row answers three questions: what stage are they in, what is the next move, and what date is it due. That is the engine. When a contact happens, you log it and immediately set the next one before you close the file. A move without a next move scheduled is where pipelines quietly die.
Qualification is where a lot of the early work lives, and it is worth doing well. Before you pour months into cultivating someone, you want a reasonable read on whether they can give at the level you are imagining. This is where a little homework on giving history, past involvement, and capacity pays off — the same instinct behind smart donor research that surfaces your next major gift. You are not snooping. You are making sure your limited time goes where a real relationship can grow.
If building and running a system like this feels like more than your week allows, there are tools that can carry some of the load — drafting moves, organizing donor notes, and keeping the next step from slipping.
Want to develop your fundraising skills? Take a look at my Claude Skills page.
Running It Without Burning Out
A system only works if you can keep it alive on a normal week, so the rhythm has to be light. Block 30 minutes every Friday to look down your list and ask one question of each active donor: did the move I planned happen, and what is next. That is the whole review. Stages shift, dates get reset, a few names move up and a few move out. Half an hour a week is enough to keep a portfolio of 50 from going stale.
Keep what you track to the essentials. For each donor I want to see their stage, the date of last contact, the next move and its date, a rough sense of capacity, and one line on what they care about. That last column is the one most people skip, and it is the one that makes every future touch feel personal instead of generic. When you know a donor funds your scholarship work because their own start was hard, your personalized donor outreach writes itself.
Then comes the part everyone tenses up about: the ask. The beauty of moves management is that solicitation stops being a cold leap. By the time you ask, you have qualified, you have cultivated, and the donor already knows you and the work. The ask becomes the next logical step in a relationship rather than an ambush. It is still worth getting the words right, and a well-prepared fundraising appeal goes a long way, but the heavy lifting was done in the months before. For major gifts especially, this patient approach is the difference between a one-time check and a donor who stays.
And staying is the whole point. Across the sector, donor retention has slipped to about 42.9%, the fifth straight year of decline. That means most organizations lose more than half their donors every year and spend themselves ragged replacing them. A real cultivation system is one of the few things that bends that curve, because donor relationships that get tended tend to last. The stewardship stage feeds right back into the next round of cultivation, and the cycle compounds.
When a relationship reaches the major-gift stage, the conversation can grow beyond a single check into how a donor structures their giving for the long term.
Curious how you or one of your major donors could maximize their giving? Use our DAF Calculator.
Where to Start This Week
You do not need new software or a consultant to begin. If this resonates, here is what I would tell you to do in the next few days.
1. Pull your top names. Open your donor records and list your 30 to 50 most promising relationships — by past giving, by capacity, or just by gut. That list is your starting portfolio.
2. Give every name a stage and a next move. One word for where they are (identification, qualification, cultivation, solicitation, stewardship) and one concrete next step with a date. Keep it in a spreadsheet for now.
3. Put a recurring 30 minutes on your calendar. Same time every week. Protect it the way you would protect a donor meeting, because that is essentially what it is.
4. Make three moves before your next review. Not a campaign. Three small, genuine touches with three real people. That is how a pipeline starts breathing.
None of this requires a big team or a big budget. It requires a list, a little structure, and the discipline to always set the next move. Start with a handful of donors this week, and you will be surprised how quickly the relationships start carrying their own momentum.
C.J. Bergmen is a pastor, licensed counselor, and fundraising strategist who helps organizations and generous individuals approach giving with honesty and long-term vision.