Imagine someone attending an event at your nonprofit for the first time.

They ask thoughtful questions about one of your programs. They spend time talking with a staff member and mention that the work connects with something they’ve experienced personally. Before leaving, they share their contact information and say they’d like to stay involved.

A few weeks later, they receive a fundraising appeal.

There’s nothing necessarily wrong with that. But think about what your organization missed. You learned something meaningful about this person, yet your next communication treated them like everyone else on your mailing list.

What if someone had followed up about the program that interested them? What if they had been invited to see the work firsthand or meet someone involved? Wouldn’t that have been a more natural next step?

This is what donor cultivation is really about. It’s the work of developing trust, discovering what matters to supporters, and helping them build meaningful connections with your mission before inviting them to give.

The challenge for most nonprofits isn’t understanding that relationships matter. It’s having enough time and a clear enough process to cultivate those relationships consistently.

I think the solution begins with a different way of looking at cultivation.

A good donor cultivation plan shouldn’t simply tell you when to contact someone. It should help you understand what you’ve learned about them and what to do next.

In this post, I’m going to cover:

• What donor cultivation is and why it matters

• How to learn what motivates prospective donors

• Five ways to build meaningful relationships before asking

• A practical donor cultivation plan

• How to measure progress and recognize readiness

• How EverRaise can give your team more capacity for cultivation

What is donor cultivation?

Donor cultivation is the process of building relationships with prospective and existing supporters before inviting them to make a gift or deepen their financial commitment.

It involves learning about their interests, helping them understand your mission, creating opportunities for participation, and developing trust over time.

The purpose isn’t simply to prepare someone for a fundraising conversation. It’s to help them determine whether and how they want to become more involved in your organization’s work.

According to CASE’s fundraising fundamentals guide, cultivation is one stage in a broader fundraising process that includes identifying prospective donors, building relationships, making an ask, and stewarding gifts.

These stages work together, but they answer different questions.

Cultivation isn’t limited to people who have never given. You might cultivate an existing donor who is interested in becoming more involved, an alum exploring a new scholarship initiative, or a supporter who has expressed an interest in a major project.

For a broader framework that connects these stages, see our guide to moves management. For the relationship-building work that follows a gift, read our article on donor stewardship.

This article focuses on what happens before the ask.

Why donor cultivation matters

It’s possible for nonprofit fundraising revenue to grow while the number of people supporting an organization declines.

That’s what the latest Fundraising Effectiveness Project report shows. Through the second quarter of 2026, charitable giving dollars increased an estimated 6.6% compared with the same period in 2025, while the number of donors declined 1.6%.

The report also found that only 11.3% of donors acquired in 2025 had given again by June 30, 2026.

Those are midyear figures, not full-year retention rates. They also don’t tell us why an individual donor stopped giving.

But they raise an important question: Are organizations doing enough to help people develop lasting relationships with their missions?

Cultivation matters because fundraising shouldn’t depend exclusively on finding new supporters or asking existing donors to give more. Organizations also need to help people become more connected to the work.

There’s evidence that the way nonprofits begin a relationship can matter.

In a 2022 study published in the *Journal of Business and Psychology*, researchers conducted three experiments involving 1,287 participants. They compared asking people for donations immediately with first inviting them to share opinions about a fundraising campaign.

The researchers found that asking for opinions encouraged greater engagement with the cause, including a willingness to learn more. That increased engagement also supported giving in their experiments.

These findings don’t prove that every nonprofit should ask a question before making a fundraising appeal. But they support an important principle.

People are more likely to develop meaningful connections when they have opportunities to participate, learn, and express what matters to them.

Cultivation should be a conversation, not simply a sequence of communications.

Five ways to cultivate stronger donor relationships

I recommend thinking about donor cultivation as a process of learning, responding, and gradually deepening the relationship.

Here are five ways to put that into practice.

1. Learn what interests the donor

Before deciding what to send someone, try to understand why they’re interested in your organization.

Let’s say your nonprofit provides educational programs for children.

One prospective donor may care about early literacy because they struggled with reading as a child. Another may be interested in career preparation. Someone else may have a personal connection with the community you serve.

All three support the same mission, but they may connect with different parts of the work.

Your goal is to discover those interests rather than assume everyone cares about the same thing.

You can begin with a few questions:

• What first interested you in our organization?

• Is there a particular part of our work you’d like to learn more about?

• What has been most meaningful about your involvement so far?

• Is there a way you’d like to become more involved?

These aren’t questions you need to ask all at once. They can come up naturally during an event, personal conversation, volunteer experience, or appropriate follow-up.

When someone answers, record the relevant information in your CRM according to your organization’s privacy practices.

The point isn’t to collect as much personal information as possible. It’s to remember what someone voluntarily shared and use it to make future interactions more thoughtful.

2. Give people a meaningful reason to participate

One of the most useful cultivation strategies is to invite people into the work before asking them to fund it.

You might invite a supporter to visit a program, attend a small gathering, meet a staff member, hear from a program leader, or volunteer.

These opportunities help prospective donors see the mission beyond a fundraising message. They also give your team a chance to learn more about the relationship.

A particularly interesting example comes from the University of Oregon.

What the University of Oregon learned about cultivation

The university developed a podcast called The Duck Stops Here to reconnect with prospective midlevel and major donors who had become difficult to engage.

Instead of inviting these individuals directly into fundraising conversations, the university invited them to participate as podcast guests.

Each interview was designed around the guest. The university paired prospects with interviewers who might share their interests, including students, faculty members, alumni, and development professionals.

The goal was to celebrate the person’s accomplishments, explore what mattered to them, and create a natural opportunity for further engagement.

According to the university’s 2022 CASE Circle of Excellence submission, 33 of the 35 prospects contacted in 2021 responded, and 31 agreed to participate.

Those figures measure participation in the cultivation activity, not donations or fundraising revenue.

Still, the example offers an important lesson.

The university gave prospective donors a reason to engage that wasn’t centered on an immediate financial request. It created an opportunity to listen, learn, and build a connection around the individual’s interests.

Most nonprofits don’t need to produce a podcast to apply this idea.

A personal invitation, program tour, volunteer opportunity, or conversation with a staff member can serve the same purpose.

The point is to make participation meaningful rather than treating it as another step toward a transaction.

3. Let what you learn change what happens next

This is where I think donor cultivation often breaks down.

An organization may learn something useful about a prospective donor but fail to act on it. The information gets buried in someone’s notes, the next fundraising campaign goes out, and the relationship continues as though nothing happened.

A better approach is to connect what you learn with an appropriate next step.

For example:

Notice that none of these examples automatically leads to an ask.

Each response helps your team make a better decision.

This also means you shouldn’t interpret every activity as a sign of growing interest. Opening an email, attending an event, or clicking a link can be useful information, but it doesn’t necessarily tell you why someone engaged.

A direct statement of interest or request for a conversation usually gives your team more meaningful context.

The purpose of cultivation isn’t to collect more donor activity. It’s to understand the relationship well enough to respond appropriately.

4. Make the next step personal when it matters

Not every cultivation interaction requires a development officer.

Your organization can use email updates, event invitations, approved outreach campaigns, and other communication tools to help supporters stay connected.

But there are moments when personal attention matters more.

Imagine a prospective donor responds to a program invitation and asks about establishing a scholarship in memory of a family member.

That isn’t the moment for another generic email.

Someone from your advancement or development team should understand the request, respond thoughtfully, and help the person explore the opportunity.

The same principle applies when someone raises a concern, asks a complicated question, or wants to discuss a significant commitment.

Technology can help identify those moments. People should own the conversations.

A useful way to evaluate any cultivation interaction is to ask: Is this something we can communicate consistently through an approved workflow, or does it require someone who can listen, exercise judgment, and develop the relationship personally?

An event reminder may be appropriate for a structured campaign. A conversation about a donor’s estate plans probably isn’t.

Your people aren’t the inefficiency in the process. They’re the reason the process matters.

5. Recognize when an invitation to give makes sense

Cultivation shouldn’t become an endless series of meetings, emails, and events simply because no one knows when to make an ask.

Eventually, your team may have an appropriate opportunity to invite financial support.

But readiness isn’t determined by how many messages someone has received or how many months they’ve been in your database.

I would look for three things.

Interest: Does this person care about a particular aspect of our work?

Connection: Have they developed enough familiarity and trust to understand the opportunity?

Fit: Is there a giving opportunity that aligns with their interests, circumstances, and stated preferences?

Those questions don’t produce an automatic yes or no.

For a significant gift, your development officer still needs to use judgment and, where appropriate, have a personal conversation about the donor’s goals and interests.

Someone may love your mission without being ready or able to give. That’s useful information, and the relationship should remain valuable regardless of the decision.

Good cultivation creates a more thoughtful opportunity for an ask. It doesn’t guarantee the answer.

How to build a practical donor cultivation plan

You don’t need an elaborate strategy document to get started.

I recommend beginning with one group of prospective supporters and a manageable plan your team can actually carry out.

Imagine you have 50 people who recently attended an event. They expressed some interest in the organization, but most haven’t given.

You could begin with a simple four-week plan.

This is an illustrative plan, not a universal schedule. Some relationships move more quickly, while major-gift cultivation can take months or longer.

More importantly, the schedule shouldn’t continue unchanged when someone responds.

If a prospect requests a conversation in week one, don’t make them wait until week four. If someone declines further contact, don’t keep moving them through the sequence.

What should you actually track?

Rather than recording only the date and type of every touchpoint, I would make sure your team can answer five questions about each active relationship:

1. What do we know? The donor’s stated interests, preferences, or relevant relationship context.

2. What happened? The last meaningful interaction or response.

3. What did we learn? Anything that changes our understanding of the relationship.

4. What should happen next? A relevant invitation, update, conversation, or decision to pause.

5. Who owns it? The person responsible for following through.

For example, an event attendee might have said they’re interested in your literacy program.

Your CRM record shouldn’t stop at “Attended event.”

A more useful note might say: “Interested in literacy programs. Asked how volunteers support reading groups. Send program overview and offer introduction to volunteer coordinator. Follow up next week.”

That provides enough context for someone else on the team to take the next step.

Your moves management process can help you assign and track those actions. The cultivation work itself is learning what matters and deciding how to respond.

How to measure donor cultivation

One of the easiest mistakes is measuring cultivation by activity alone.

A team can schedule dozens of meetings, send hundreds of emails, and make plenty of calls without meaningfully strengthening a relationship.

Those activities may be necessary, but they aren’t the outcome.

I would separate cultivation measurement into three categories.

You can then look at longer-term outcomes such as qualified giving opportunities, first gifts, increased commitments, and continued engagement.

For example, imagine your team invites 100 prospective donors to participate in an appropriate program briefing.

Twenty attend. Eight express interest in a particular initiative. Three request conversations with a development officer.

Those hypothetical numbers would not tell you how much money the campaign raised. But they would show that your team created opportunities to learn more about supporters and identify appropriate personal follow-up.

That’s useful cultivation information.

Over time, you can evaluate whether those interactions lead to stronger relationships and whether particular approaches are more effective.

The most important cultivation metric isn’t how often your organization speaks. It’s whether the relationship becomes better understood and more meaningful.

Where EverRaise fits into donor cultivation

Most development teams understand the importance of getting to know their supporters.

Their challenge is finding enough time to do it well.

A development director may be able to maintain close relationships with a few dozen major donors, but what about the hundreds of other supporters who might welcome an invitation, program update, or opportunity to share their interests?

Those people matter, too.

This is where technology can create capacity.

A nonprofit might use an approved engagement campaign to invite supporters to an event, deliver a relevant update, or ask whether they’d like a staff member to contact them. The outreach could involve email, SMS, or AI voice where appropriate and permitted.

The important part is what happens when someone responds.

Does your team know who expressed interest? Did someone ask for a personal conversation? Was a communication preference updated? Does a staff member know what to do next?

At EverRaise, we’re building around this challenge.

EverRaise is an AI engagement assistant designed to help relationship-driven organizations create campaigns, reach supporters, and coordinate follow-up across channels.

Through EverRaise’s engagement capabilities, teams can coordinate AI voice, SMS, email, voicemail, transfers, and follow-up workflows while retaining responsibility for the messages, audience, and outreach decisions.

What we’ve seen in a real campaign

In one university engagement campaign, EverRaise reached 868 contacts in less than five hours. The campaign generated 163 live answers, 116 link clicks, and more than 20 estimated hours of staff time saved.

We shared those results in our September EverRaise product update.

Those results come from one multichannel campaign. They don’t establish a typical response rate, prove a donor cultivation or retention improvement, or guarantee similar outcomes for another organization.

What they illustrate is an operational benefit.

The university could carry out structured outreach and identify where further engagement might be useful without requiring staff to manually manage every contact attempt.

That additional capacity matters because it can give development teams more time for the conversations that require personal attention.

EverRaise doesn’t replace the fundraiser who listens to a donor’s concerns, explores a giving opportunity, or builds a relationship over time.

It’s designed to help that fundraiser spend less time on the repetitive work surrounding those relationships.

Your organization remains responsible for choosing appropriate audiences, reviewing messages, protecting donor information, and honoring applicable consent, disclosure, privacy, and opt-out requirements. Contact validation supports data quality but does not establish permission to call or text someone.

Frequently asked questions about donor cultivation

What is donor cultivation in fundraising?

Donor cultivation is the process of building relationships with prospective or existing donors before inviting them to make a gift or deepen their financial commitment. It involves learning about their interests, building trust, inviting participation, and helping them understand the organization’s mission.

What are examples of donor cultivation activities?

Examples include personal conversations, program updates, volunteer invitations, tours, small-group gatherings, meetings with organizational leaders, and opportunities to provide feedback or learn more about specific initiatives.

How long does donor cultivation take?

There is no universal timeline. Some relationships develop through a few meaningful interactions, while major-gift cultivation can take months or longer. The appropriate pace depends on the donor’s interests, circumstances, engagement, and the opportunity being discussed.

What is the difference between donor cultivation and stewardship?

Cultivation focuses on developing a relationship before an ask or new commitment. Stewardship focuses on gratitude, communication, impact reporting, and relationship care after a gift. Both contribute to broader donor engagement.

How do you know when a donor is ready to be asked?

Look for meaningful interest in the mission, a level of trust and connection, and a giving opportunity that fits the person’s interests and circumstances. Those signals inform a development professional’s judgment; they do not automatically establish readiness.

How can a small nonprofit improve donor cultivation?

Start with a manageable group of supporters. Ask what interests them, create useful participation opportunities, record meaningful responses, and assign a clear next step. Use technology for appropriate structured outreach while keeping people responsible for important conversations.

Donor cultivation starts with listening

It’s easy to think of cultivation as the work that happens before a fundraising ask.

But I think there’s a better way to understand it.

Cultivation is how your organization learns what people care about and helps them discover whether they want a deeper relationship with your mission.

That requires more than a calendar of emails, events, and calls. It requires curiosity, meaningful invitations, thoughtful follow-up, and the willingness to let what you learn change what happens next.

For smaller development teams, the challenge is making those relationships possible with limited time.

A clear cultivation plan and the right technology can help. But the technology should create capacity for your people, not take them out of the relationship.

Because the goal isn’t simply to move someone closer to a donation.

It’s to build a relationship worth maintaining.

Engagement drives retention. Retention drives revenue.

Explore how EverRaise helps your team reach supporters, coordinate follow-up, and make more time for meaningful relationships, or request a demo.