Donor Cultivation: How to Build Relationships Before the Ask

According to a major gift benchmark study, most nonprofits report that it takes between six months and two years to build a strong enough relationship with a prospective donor to secure a major gift. 

With months or even years between identifying a prospect and asking for a donation, what does your organization do in the meantime? How do you bridge the gap between introducing them to your cause and asking for a major donation? The answer is donor cultivation. This guide will cover everything you need to know about this important process, including:

Relationship-building is a crucial part of any nonprofit fundraising strategy, but it can be difficult to know exactly how to cultivate positive, lasting relationships with donors. Let’s explore donor cultivation basics and best practices to help you strengthen your nonprofit’s approach.

Frequently Asked Questions about Donor Cultivation

First, let’s ensure you have a thorough understanding of what donor cultivation is and how it works by answering a few common questions.

What is donor cultivation?

Donor cultivation is the process of building relationships with prospective nonprofit donors before you make a fundraising appeal. 

The cultivation process typically involves creating multiple touchpoints with prospects, providing information about your organization’s work, and getting to know each prospect personally. You can cultivate all kinds of potential supporter relationships before making an ask, but strategic donor cultivation is particularly important for prospective major donors.

What does donor cultivation help you achieve?

The main goal of donor cultivation is to build a strong enough relationship with a prospect to secure a sizeable donation for your nonprofit. Ideally, you’ll end up with new major donors, planned giving donors, and other dedicated supporters. However, the process also comes with several additional benefits, such as:

  • Learning more about supporters’ interests, priorities, and values.

  • Increasing your nonprofit’s fundraising capacity over time.

  • Boosting donor retention by starting relationships off strong.

  • Cultivating genuine trust in your organization.

Secondarily, you may also use donor cultivation to improve the results of capital campaigns, strengthen your fundraising team’s relationship-building skills, and much more.

How long does it take to cultivate donors?

The timeline for successful donor cultivation can vary depending on prospective donors’ giving levels and many other factors. For example, you might be on a quicker timeline if you’re planning a capital campaign with a specific deadline versus trying to build up your major giving program to improve organizational sustainability.

In general, however, donor cultivation can take anywhere from a few months to multiple years. Remember that it’s a lengthy but highly important process, and your investment will pay off when you secure major donations and end up with long-term, passionate supporters.

The Donor Cultivation Cycle: Explained

To understand what successful cultivation looks like, you first need to understand how it fits into the overall fundraising process. The donor cultivation cycle, also called the fundraising cycle, is made up of four key stages:

  1. Identification and Research: This stage involves using prospect research tools and strategies to identify the best candidates for major giving and to learn more about them. By searching for capacity, affinity, and propensity markers, you can discover and prioritize the supporters who are most likely to give a large donation to your nonprofit.

  2. Cultivation: This is the stage we’re focusing on in this guide—donor cultivation involves getting to know your prospects, inviting them to get involved with your nonprofit, and ultimately building a strong relationship with each one. Cultivation is typically a lengthy stage that focuses on using personalized strategies to connect with prospects and inspire trust in your organization.

  3. Solicitation: When your relationship with a prospect is strong enough, you can move into the solicitation stage and make your fundraising ask. Be sure to tailor this appeal to the financial means and interests of the prospect, and ask for a specific amount for a certain project, campaign, or initiative that resonates with them.

  4. Stewardship: After they give, you’ll need to choose multiple appreciation techniques to thank and retain your new donor. Keep them updated on their gift’s usage and impact, and encourage them to stay actively engaged with your nonprofit by attending events, reading your newsletter, or even volunteering.

Once you’ve moved through the entire donor cultivation cycle with a supporter, you can start the process over again with the eventual goal of soliciting more gifts or upgrading their support in the future.

Creating a Major Donor Cultivation Plan

Just like it’s important to have an overall fundraising plan for each of your nonprofit’s campaigns, you should also create detailed, personalized plans to guide the donor cultivation process. Outlining the specific communications, activities, and events you’ll use to build relationships with prospects helps you stay on track and ultimately find more success with cultivation.

This is especially true for prospective major donors. These supporters are vital to your organization’s long-term success, and the size of their gifts warrants delicate, thoughtful efforts to build a strong relationship before making an ask. After all, those considering giving a multi-thousand-dollar donation need to believe in your organization wholeheartedly and trust that you’ll use their gifts wisely and transparently to push your mission forward.

Because of the personal nature of these relationships, your donor cultivation plans should be tailored to the interests and preferences of individual prospects. However, you may create a basic donor cultivation plan to use as a consistent starting point. Include several cultivation activities in this plan, such as:

  • Personal phone calls with your major gifts officer.

  • Casual, in-person meetings for lunch or coffee to get to know prospects.

  • Regular emails to keep in touch and update them on your work.

  • Tours and behind-the-scenes looks at your office or program facilities.

  • Donor cultivation events where prospects can meet each other and learn more about your organization’s current priorities.

Additionally, determine which staff members are responsible for managing each activity and provide a general timeline for when each activity should occur.

Sample Donor Cultivation Plan

Take a look at our sample donor cultivation plan to see what a general plan aimed at major donors might look like:

This plan includes multiple personal check-ins and plenty of time for the prospect to develop a relationship with your major gifts officer. It also introduces prospects to other important players at your nonprofit like board members and your development director. Plus, the plan is easily adaptable to suit the needs of different prospects and timelines.

When creating a basic donor cultivation plan for your nonprofit, make sure to build flexibility into it. Timelines, prospects’ interests, and team members’ availability may change, and your plan should be able to meet the needs of a variety of different situations.

Keep in mind that it may also take many rounds of cultivation activities before reaching the solicitation stage, depending on how a specific relationship is progressing. Don’t worry if this is the case! The more solid your relationship with a prospective major donor is when you make your ask, the more likely they are to respond well and choose to offer their support.

Personalizing Your Donor Cultivation Plans

Once you have a general plan like the sample provided above, you can start personalizing it for individual prospects. To do so, you might take the following steps:

  1. Take notes on your interactions throughout the cultivation process. Every time you speak with a prospect, record details about the conversation in your donor database. These may include anything from the projects they seem most interested in to personal details like their upcoming family vacation.

  2. Tailor invitations to their charitable interests. Whether you learn which causes or campaigns they’re most passionate about from initial conversations or your prospect research, you should tailor conversations and invitations to these interests. For instance, if helping youth experiencing homelessness is one of their top priorities, you could invite them to visit the new public shelter you’re building.

  3. Track their engagement with your cultivation efforts as you try them. You might begin the cultivation process with a personal phone call and find out that one prospect doesn’t like to talk on the phone. From here, you should shift your strategy for that prospect and send them more emails and invitations to in-person meetings to honor their preferences.

  4. Extend or shorten the timeline as needed. Every prospect has a different relationship with your nonprofit, so it’s natural that they’ll be ready to give at different times in the cultivation journey. As you consider whether to move forward with an ask or extend your cultivation plan, look for signs like excitement about a specific project that indicate they may be ready to give.

For example, say that you know a prospect named Mary is interested in your healthcare access program based on your early conversations. You might change the order of your donor cultivation plan to prioritize a personal tour of your free community clinic. If Mary loves the tour and expresses excitement about your capital campaign to renovate the clinic, you could reevaluate your timeline and consider asking her to give to the campaign sooner rather than later.

3 Strategies to Help You Cultivate Donors

As you craft and tailor your donor cultivation plans, use the following best practices to ensure you cultivate donors effectively.

1. Use prospect research data to guide your outreach.

The insights you glean from your organization’s prospect research process can be invaluable for donor cultivation. Information about prospects’ charitable histories, community involvement, and financial decisions can guide you to conclusions about which cultivation methods might work best to secure their interest.

For example, take a look at how you might use prospect research data in the two scenarios below: 

  1. You find information about a prospect’s giving history and charitable interests. This information tells you what kind of campaigns, projects, and initiatives would pique their interest. If you see Mary has donated to other healthcare nonprofits and political campaigns, for instance, you can focus your cultivation efforts on that cause area.

  2. You discover that a prospect previously served on another nonprofit’s board. This indicates that in addition to giving a major gift, this prospect might be interested in serving on your own board someday. To cultivate this relationship, invite them for a personal tour to give them an up-close look at your operations and introduce them to your current board members.

You can use all three types of prospect research markers to guide your cultivation strategy: capacity, affinity, and propensity. Just be sure to supplement this data with information you learn firsthand from conversations with prospects.

2. Highlight your organization’s impact in tangible ways.

Before they give, prospective donors want to know that their future donations will go toward projects that will generate real action and change. Prove to your prospects that their donations will be well-spent by spending plenty of time demonstrating your nonprofit’s impact during the donor cultivation process.

Specifically, show donors how you use fundraising dollars by highlighting tangible impacts. You might do this by:

  • Giving prospects a tour of your program facility so they can see your impact firsthand.

  • Sharing written or video testimonials from beneficiaries, volunteers, or even other major donors about your nonprofit’s impact on their lives.

  • Sending prospects your annual reports to provide them with concrete data about your organization’s impact.

As you share these resources and impact stories, be sure to follow ethical storytelling best practices. Only tell beneficiaries’ stories with their express permission, and always infuse respect into every story you tell. 

3. Work with a fundraising consultant to hone your cultivation plans.

Finally, a fundraising consultant who specializes in major donor fundraising, prospect research, or legacy giving can be a great asset to your nonprofit during donor cultivation. The right consultant can help your organization design and hone your cultivation plans or even provide training to bolster your team’s overall fundraising capabilities.

For instance, the expert consultants at Donorly can help your nonprofit with any or all of the following:

  • Donor research: Prospect research subscriptions give your nonprofit access to our top-notch research team, who can provide all the insights you need to identify and cultivate major donors.

  • Capital campaign planning: Need to cultivate donors ahead of or during a capital campaign? Our fundraising experts can build cultivation into a comprehensive capital campaign plan and support you every step of the way.

  • Campaign strategy development: We understand that donor cultivation is a key part of any fundraising strategy. Our team will work by your side to identify your needs and goals and develop a strategy accordingly.

  • Fundraising training: Whether your staff, board members, or volunteers need extra training on donor cultivation best practices, we’ve got you covered.

  • Overall development support: Our consultants can step in to help you through a transition. For instance, if you’re hiring a new major gifts officer, we can guide you through the hiring process and fill in gaps in the meantime.

To choose a consultant who aligns with your nonprofit’s values and can help your donor cultivation plans get results, ask for recommendations from your peers and thoroughly research the services that each consultant offers. If you have questions about a specific consultant’s approach to donor cultivation, don’t be afraid to schedule a consultation and learn more about how they can help your nonprofit.

Wrapping Up

Donor cultivation is an involved process that can feel overwhelming at times, but we believe that any organization can successfully cultivate major donors with the right strategies and support. If you’re ever unsure about what to do next or just want an extra helping hand as you build these important relationships, the Donorly team is here to help. Reach out to our team to learn what we can do to support your unique needs and goals.

Want to do more research first? No problem! Check out these additional resources to learn more about donor cultivation and all things fundraising:

Fundraising TipsThe Donorly Team