Major Gift Moves Management Template
Three documents and three sheets that check every prospect's next action against today's date, distinguishing a missed commitment from a stall nobody logged.
Free download · No account needed
Every moves management guide gives the same advice: track each prospect's stage, name a next action, add an owner and a date. Following that advice produces a register that looks disciplined and says nothing about whether the discipline is actually holding. A next action with a date that passed last month reads identically to one due next week until somebody checks today's date against every row. A prospect with no next action at all looks the same as one deliberately paused.
This pack checks it instead of asking for it. Portfolio Review joins the Prospect Register's stage and last-contact date against the Moves Register's next action and due date, then compares both to today. A committed action whose due date has passed is one failure. A prospect with no action logged at all, already past what their stage's own cadence should expect, is a different one, the same silent pattern retention analysis catches in the annual file. Every capacity figure traces to a disclosed fact, never a purchased wealth-screening score.
In the worked example a 20-prospect portfolio for a fictional land trust carries 17 open prospects worth $3,095,000. Seven are stalled, worth $925,000: 41.2% of open prospects by count but 29.9% of open value, because the stall skews toward the middle of the portfolio rather than its largest asks. The donors here are the same ones an annual appeal's top segment would otherwise keep mailing a uniform ask. Once a stalled ask closes, the gift still needs its own acknowledgment and the same reconciliation as every other gift that lands.
What is in the pack
Portfolio Review
Joins stage and last contact against next action and due date, flagging a missed commitment separately from a silent stall.
Prospect Register
Every capacity figure names the specific disclosed fact or giving pattern behind it, never a purchased wealth-screening score.
Moves Register
One next action per prospect with an owner and a due date, or "None scheduled" written down on purpose.
Cultivation Plan
A full plan for one named prospect, with the ask range left open until a real figure is confirmed.
Proposal Format
The document the prospect reads, opening from what they already did and closing with the next step already scheduled.
Solicitation Brief
One page for the solicitor, with the ask, the likely objections, and the three outcomes to plan for.
How it works
- 1
Send the portfolio
Every prospect's stage, last contact and whatever capacity information you actually have, sourced to where it came from. Clean up duplicate CRM records first if the same prospect already has two rows.
- 2
Log the next action
Push for a specific call, visit or document rather than "stay in touch," and write "None scheduled" when nothing is genuinely planned rather than leaving the cell blank.
- 3
Run the portfolio review
River joins both registers against today's date and reports two counts and two dollar totals: committed actions past their due date, and prospects with no action logged at all.
- 4
Draft the ask documents
Once a prospect reaches Solicitation with a real number, get the cultivation plan, the proposal and the solicitation brief drafted from that prospect's own recorded history.
Frequently asked questions
What counts as a stalled prospect?
Two different things, tracked separately. A committed and missed prospect has a next action that was logged with a due date, and that date has passed. A silent stall has no next action on file at all, and time since last contact already exceeds what that prospect's own stage should expect.
Isn't "None scheduled" just a missing next action?
No, and treating it that way is the mistake. A blank cell is an oversight. "None scheduled" written deliberately means somebody looked at the relationship and decided nothing is genuinely planned right now. Portfolio Review only flags a silent stall once contact has also passed the stage's own cadence, not the moment the action field is empty.
Where does the capacity figure come from, if not wealth screening?
A specific disclosed fact from a real conversation, a pattern already in this organisation's own giving history, or a named referral. Apra's own ethics guidance calls for tracking data provenance so information is legally obtained from reliable sources, and a source column is what that looks like in a register.
Why five stages instead of our CRM's own pipeline names?
Rename them. Identification, qualification, cultivation, solicitation and stewardship is the structure most donor CRMs already assume. The register maps onto whatever your system calls the same five steps, and the cadence a stage implies travels with it under any name.
Does a stalled Stewardship-stage donor count in the value at risk?
No, on purpose. Stewardship means the gift already landed, so a stalled thank-you call or report is a risk to the next gift, not dollars missing from this one. The rollup's 29.9%-of-open-value figure covers Identification through Solicitation only, and Stewardship stalls are tracked and flagged on their own line instead.
Is the ask amount in a Cultivation Plan a confirmed number?
Not always, and the plan says so when it isn't. Desmond Achterberg's plan carries a $300,000 placeholder between two honest readings of what he actually said, and deliberately does not lock a figure before the specific conversation that would confirm it. A number the prospect has not seen yet is a guess wearing a decimal point.
Find out which prospects have actually gone quiet
Send the portfolio and whatever next actions already exist. The first thing back is the count and dollar value of every stalled prospect, split by which failure it is.
Review my portfolio