Building a Major Gifts Portfolio
Move from reactive asks to a managed portfolio: qualification, moves management, and a caseload you can defend.
Through the Environment lens
Inclination often shows up here as advocacy engagement as much as giving: the member who shows up for a rally, signs every petition, and comments on every campaign update is demonstrating the same signal this module tracks in a donor who takes every call. Qualification sprints work well against sustainer upgrade candidates and long-tenure land trust members, since values-driven loyalty, giving to the same cause for years regardless of any single campaign's outcome, is exactly the connection signal this module ranks first. Portfolio sizing has to account for donors whose giving spikes around a specific fight and then goes quiet, where the discipline of a genuine next move, not a hollow check-in, matters most.
Continuing education
1.25 points
Relationship Building · Securing the Gift
Learning objectives
- Qualify a prospect on the three signals of connection, capacity, and inclination, and explain why connection plus inclination outranks capacity alone.
- Size a portfolio from the hours available for relationship work and name the conditions under which a name comes off it.
- Run a two-week qualification sprint that sorts fifteen to twenty names into qualified, later, or released, with the reason written down.
- Write a one-page moves management plan with a stage, a working hypothesis, and the next three dated moves.
- Identify the moves that carried a loyal donor from a qualification sprint to a six-figure commitment over twenty months.
Designed for CFRE continuing education. Not yet accepted; no CFRE points can be claimed.
Lessons
- 23 min
Video lesson
Who belongs in your portfolio (and who doesn't)
III Discern · Current and Prospective Donor Research
- 19 min
Field guide· PDF
Qualification sprints that fill a caseload
III Discern · Relationship Building
- 20 min
Template· DOCX
Moves management plan template
VI Accompany · Relationship Building
- 16 min
Case study· PDF
Case study: a first $100K gift
IV Invite · Securing the Gift
This is members-only material.
Members get every lesson, template, and worksheet in all eight tracks, plus the support to put them to work in your shop.
More in this stage
Donor Communications & Stewardship
The Case for Support That Writes Itself
One master case document that powers every appeal, proposal, and conversation, built from your mission's real evidence.
Annual Giving & Direct Response
Annual Giving Systems: Calendar & Segmentation
Graduate from one-off appeals to a segmented, scheduled program with lapsed-donor recovery built in.
Annual Giving & Direct Response
Monthly Giving That Compounds
Sustainers are the closest thing to endowment a small organization has. Launch and grow a program built to last.