What Is Moves Management? A Nonprofit’s Guide to the Donor Cultivation Process

Moves management is a structured fundraising process that guides a prospective donor through a defined sequence of relationship-building steps, called moves, from first contact to a committed gift and beyond. It replaces ad hoc outreach with an intentional, trackable plan for every major prospect. If your development team has ever lost track of who called a donor last, or forgotten to follow up after a promising first meeting, moves management is the discipline built to fix that.

This guide covers where the concept came from, how it actually works, and what to look for if you decide your organization needs software to support it.

The discipline matters more than ever given where donor retention actually stands. The latest Fundraising Effectiveness Project data puts overall donor retention around 43 percent, while new donor retention has stayed essentially flat for several reporting periods in a row. The report’s researchers flag turning a first-time donor into a repeat one as among the sector’s toughest remaining challenges. Moves management is the structured answer to that exact problem: a deliberate way to guide a new supporter from a single gift toward a lasting relationship, instead of leaving that transition to chance.

Where moves management came from

The concept traces back to a university fundraising office. David Dunlop, a senior development officer at Cornell University, described the concept as “changing people’s attitudes so they want to give.” Some accounts credit Cornell colleague Buck Smith as a co-originator of the framework.

Dunlop’s insight was simple but overlooked at the time. Fundraising outcomes depend heavily on the strength of a relationship, and timing an ask well only carries a donor so far on its own. A donor gives because their attitude toward the organization has shifted, and that shift happens through a series of deliberate touchpoints rather than a single well-timed letter.

Decades later, the term has become standard vocabulary in development offices, even as the tools used to run the process have changed considerably.

Moves vs. stages: the two things people mix up

People new to the concept often use “move” and “stage” interchangeably, but they describe different things. Getting this distinction right makes the rest of the framework much easier to apply.

A stage is where a prospect currently sits in the relationship: identification, qualification, cultivation, solicitation, or stewardship. A move is a specific, deliberate action taken to advance them toward the next stage, such as a phone call, a facility tour, a personalized impact report, or a one-on-one meeting.

Think of stages as the map and moves as the steps you take along it. A prospect can sit in the cultivation stage for months while a development officer makes several individual moves, each one designed to deepen the relationship before an ask ever happens.

The five stages of moves management

Most organizations describe moves management using five core stages. Some add a sixth or seventh, splitting stewardship into separate acknowledgment and renewal phases, but the five below cover the standard framework. Treat this as a common structure to adapt, not a rigid formula that every organization has to follow identically. What matters more than the exact number of stages is that everyone on staff agrees on what each one means and can point to where a given prospect currently stands.

Identification

This is the wide net. Development staff and researchers identify individuals with both the financial capacity to give at a meaningful level and some existing affinity for the organization’s mission, whether through past giving, volunteering, or a personal connection to the cause.

Qualification

Not every name on the identification list deserves a dedicated cultivation plan. Qualification narrows that list through research, verifying capacity, confirming interest, and deciding which prospects are worth the time investment of a formal moves management strategy.

Cultivation

This is typically the longest stage, and it’s where the actual relationship gets built. Staff work to understand a prospect’s motivations, connect them to programs that align with their interests, and build genuine trust before any request for a gift. A site visit, an invitation to meet program participants, or a series of thoughtful conversations often matter more here than any formal presentation. The goal is learning what the prospect cares about, not rushing them toward a decision.

Solicitation

The ask happens here, timed and sized appropriately to the relationship that cultivation established. A rushed or poorly sized solicitation can undo months of relationship-building, which is why this stage should feel like the natural next step rather than a cold pitch.

Stewardship

Stewardship closes the loop. It includes gratitude, updates on how the gift was used, and continued engagement that sets up the next cycle of cultivation rather than treating the relationship as finished once the check clears.

How to build a moves management process that holds up over time

Understanding the framework is one thing. Running it consistently across a whole portfolio of prospects is another. Plenty of development teams launch a moves management initiative with enthusiasm, only to watch it lose momentum once the initial planning phase ends and daily fundraising work takes over again. A few practices separate organizations that sustain moves management from those that let it fade after a few months.

• Define stage criteria in writing so every staff member agrees on what specifically has to happen before a prospect advances from one stage to the next.
• Assign a single portfolio owner to each prospect, and set a realistic cap on how many active relationships one person can manage well at a time.
• Log every meaningful interaction within a short window, commonly 48 hours, rather than relying on memory or scattered notes.
• Build a simple cultivation calendar so outreach happens proactively instead of only when a solicitation deadline approaches.
• Review portfolios together with a manager on a regular cadence, in addition to individual check-ins, so gaps and stalled prospects surface early.

None of these steps require complicated technology on their own. What they require is consistency, which is exactly where most moves management efforts start to break down.

Why most moves management efforts fail

Moves management sounds straightforward on paper, and that’s part of the problem. Plenty of organizations adopt the terminology without building the discipline to sustain it.

A common failure point is treating moves management as a spreadsheet exercise that nobody keeps updated after the first quarter. Another is applying the framework only to a handful of top-tier major donors while ignoring the mid-level pipeline that could grow into major gifts with the right cultivation. A third is letting “moves” turn into a checkbox activity disconnected from genuine relationship building, where staff log a call simply to hit an activity target rather than to move the relationship forward in any real sense.

Staff turnover creates a fourth failure point that catches many organizations off guard. When a development officer with years of relationship history leaves and takes that knowledge with them, an unrecorded process collapses overnight. A prospect who felt genuinely known suddenly starts receiving generic outreach from someone with no memory of past conversations, and the relationship often stalls or lapses entirely.

Dunlop himself cautioned against this kind of hollowing out. The point was never to game a system of tracked activities. It was to change how a person feels about an organization, and that only happens through real attention, not documentation for its own sake.

What to look for in software if you’re running moves management

Small organizations with a short prospect list can run this entire process manually with a well-maintained spreadsheet. Once a portfolio grows past a handful of names, though, tracking stages and moves in email threads and scattered documents becomes a genuine liability. Here’s what matters most when evaluating a system to support the process.

• A dedicated stage-and-pipeline tracking structure, not a generic contact record. The system needs to hold a prospect’s current stage, next planned move, and portfolio owner as first-class fields, not something bolted together from tags and free-text notes.
• Customization without a developer. Every organization’s stage definitions and move types look a little different, and software that requires a technical consultant to change a pipeline field defeats the purpose for a team that needs to adjust its process as it learns.
• Real segmentation. Moves management depends on grouping prospects by capacity, affinity, program interest, or stage so outreach can be tailored rather than generic. A CRM that can’t segment cleanly makes the personalized part of moves management difficult to execute in practice.
• Data that connects to the rest of the organization. For nonprofits running both fundraising and direct-service programs, a major donor’s engagement history is more useful sitting next to program and case data rather than living in an isolated donor database.

This is where a platform like LiveImpact’s donor management software fits the picture, built around configurable segmentation and staff-adjustable workflows rather than a fixed pipeline structure that only a developer can change.

Frequently asked questions

What is moves management in fundraising?

Moves management is a structured process that guides a prospective donor through defined relationship-building steps, called moves, from initial identification through cultivation, solicitation, and ongoing stewardship. It replaces informal, inconsistent outreach with a documented, trackable plan for each major prospect.

What are the five stages of moves management?

The five standard stages are identification, qualification, cultivation, solicitation, and stewardship. Some organizations expand this to six or seven stages by separating acknowledgment or renewal into their own distinct phases.

Is moves management only for major gift donors?

Moves management originated as a major gift strategy, but the same stage-and-move framework applies to mid-level donors with growth potential. Limiting the process only to top-tier prospects often means missing donors who could become major gift supporters with consistent cultivation.

What’s the difference between a move and a stage?

A stage describes where a prospect currently sits in the relationship, such as cultivation or solicitation. A move is a specific action taken to advance that prospect toward the next stage, such as a call, a tour, or a personalized meeting.

Do you need special software to run a moves management program?

Small organizations with a short prospect list can run moves management manually. As a portfolio grows, dedicated software with pipeline tracking, segmentation, and portfolio assignment features becomes far more reliable than spreadsheets or email threads for keeping the process consistent.

Moves management has stayed relevant for decades because it addresses a real problem: donors give when they feel known, not when they’re simply asked at the right time. The framework gives development teams a structure to build that relationship deliberately instead of hoping consistency happens on its own.

If your organization is ready to put a moves management process on solid footing, with donor data that connects to the rest of your programs rather than sitting in its own silo, you can request a demo to see how it works in practice.