Moves Management for Charities: A Practical 2026 Guide

Moves management replaces ad-hoc donor outreach with a system: every supporter has a known next step, and every interaction gets logged. Done well, it deepens relationships through the donor cycle and turns one-time givers into long-term partners.

But most moves management content is written for charities with full-time gift officers and 100-donor portfolios. If you are a one-person fundraising team or an all-volunteer board, that framing is the problem. You do not need a pipeline tool. You need a habit you can actually keep.

This guide reframes the five stages as a workflow a small charity can run inside one free donor CRM: tag, filter, segment, email, log the touch. Sector bodies including NCVO and the Chartered Institute of Fundraising consistently flag donor retention as one of the weakest levers small charities pull. A systematic approach to "moves" is one of the few levers a small organisation can use to beat that benchmark without hiring.

Small-charity verdict: if you have fewer than around 50 active donors, you do not need a separate moves system. You need a recurring weekly review of the contacts you already have. If you have more, the workflow below scales without a paid CRM bill.

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In this article:

• What is moves management?

• Why moves management matters for donor retention

• The 5 stages of moves management (and what to do at each)

• How to set up your moves management system

• Your moves management checklist

• Technology that makes moves management easier

• 5 common moves management mistakes (and how to avoid them)

• Moves management best practices

• Frequently asked questions

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What is moves management?

Moves management is the practice of tracking and deepening donor relationships through planned interactions, or "moves." Each move guides a supporter from first awareness toward a deeper commitment: a first gift, a recurring pledge, a major gift, a planned gift, or a volunteer role tied to your mission.

The process involves five things:

• Mapping a clear next step for every donor based on giving history and engagement

• Planning specific touchpoints that match where the donor is in their journey

• Logging every interaction so the next person on your team picks up where you left off

• Acting on the data: who is warming up, who is going cold, who is ready to be asked

• Moving donors to the next stage only when they are ready, not when your financial year is ending

A concrete example of one donor moving through all five stages: Maya gives £50 online after a friend shares your Christmas appeal (identification: she lands in your CRM). You see she opened your next three emails and clicked on the programme update (qualification: she is engaged). You invite her to a small site visit and send a handwritten note (cultivation). Six months later you ask her for a £500 recurring pledge tied to the programme she cares about (solicitation). After she says yes, you send quarterly impact updates and call her on the anniversary of her first gift (stewardship). That is one donor. Moves management is doing this with every donor on purpose, not by accident.

Small-charity verdict: the five stages are not a sales funnel. They are a memory system. If you can remember what every donor told you and act on it before the relationship goes cold, you are doing moves management.

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Why moves management matters for donor retention

Sector bodies including NCVO and the Chartered Institute of Fundraising (CIoF) consistently flag donor retention as one of the weakest levers small UK charities pull. More than half of last year's donors will not give again unless something changes. For a small charity, that maths is stark: every donor you do not retain costs you the recruitment spend, plus the lifetime value you never collect.

A £15 fete ticket, an autumn appeal, a Christmas raffle, and a sponsored 5K currently means Ticket Tailor, JustGiving, Crowdfunder, and a CRM. Moves management inside one free platform consolidates that stack and gives every supporter a deliberate next step, whatever tool they came through.

Moves management is the practical fix. It works for three reasons.

It personalises engagement. Instead of sending the same appeal to your whole list, you track how each donor interacts with your organisation and engage them on what they actually care about. For example, if you notice a donor who supports your after-school programme also engages heavily with your social media posts about career readiness, you might invite them to mentor young people in their professional field. That targeted approach turns a £50 annual donor into a long-term advocate.

It focuses your time on the right donors. A one-person fundraising team cannot personally cultivate 800 people. Moves management says: identify the 20 to 30 who could become recurring or major givers, work them every week, and put everyone else in a saved segment for batch cultivation. Resources go where they have the biggest return.

It builds steady, predictable income. Peak giving seasons get crowded. The charities that do well at Christmas are the ones that started cultivating in March. Moves management forces you to plan touches across the whole year, not cram them into November.

The bottleneck for most small organisations is not the framework. The framework is well-documented. The bottleneck is having one place where notes, tags, last-touch dates, and the next ask all live together, instead of three spreadsheets and a trustee's inbox. That is the problem the next section solves.

Small-charity verdict: if retention is your weakest number, moves management is the single highest-leverage practice you can adopt this quarter. It costs nothing if you already have a donor CRM.

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The 5 stages of moves management (and what to do at each)

Zeffy's canonical donor-relationship spine is four verbs: identify, cultivate, solicit, and steward. Moves management adds a fifth stage (qualification) between identify and cultivate, because not every prospect is worth your weekly attention.

For each stage below, you will find: a plain definition, the specific action to take, an example opener (sample wording you should customise for your organisation and voice), the SMART goal to set, and the signal that tells you the donor is ready to move to the next stage.

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Stage 1: Identification (finding potential donors)

Definition: finding individuals or organisations likely to support your cause and getting them into your CRM.

Specific actions:

• Pull every name from your last three campaigns into one list

• Add event attendees, newsletter subscribers, and volunteer applicants

• Tag each contact with the channel that brought them in (event, peer-to-peer, social, referral)

• For larger organisations, use prospect-research resources to find new prospects beyond your warm list

Sample opener (customise for your organisation): "Hi Maya, thanks for joining us at the Tuesday volunteer evening. I noticed you mentioned your daughter is in our reading programme. Would it be useful if I sent you the programme's impact report when it comes out next month?"

SMART goal example: add 50 qualified new prospects to the CRM this quarter, each tagged with their source channel.

Tools to consider: for prospect research beyond your warm list, start with the Register of Charities (E&W) for due diligence on corporate donors and grant-makers, and NCVO for sector benchmarking. The Charity Excellence community (a free network of around 50,000 UK charity professionals) is a strong source of peer intelligence on prospective supporters. For most small charities, your warm list from existing Gift Aid declarations is already the strongest prospect pool you have. Paid UK prospect-research tools (such as Prospecting for Gold or Factary) exist but are overkill until you have exhausted your existing network.

Signal to advance: the prospect has engaged at least twice (opened an email, came to an event, replied to a message). Move them to qualification.

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Stage 2: Qualification (prioritising the right donors)

Definition: deciding who deserves your weekly attention and who belongs in a batch-cultivation segment.

Specific actions:

• Score each engaged prospect on two axes: connection to mission and capacity to give over time

• Look for behavioural signals: opens, clicks, event attendance, volunteer hours, repeat small gifts

• Ask three or four conversational questions to confirm fit before investing more time

• Note whether the donor is a UK taxpayer eligible for Gift Aid, a donor who has signed a Gift Aid declaration (or will sign one) immediately adds 25p per £1 to your income. That changes the maths of capacity scoring for a registered charity considerably

Sample opener: "What first made you support [programme]? Is there a part of our work you feel most connected to?" Two open questions tell you more than any wealth-screening score for a small charity.

SMART goal example: qualify 20 of this quarter's new prospects into the cultivation stage by month two.

Note for community groups and CICs: if your organisation is not yet a registered charity with HMRC recognition, you cannot reclaim Gift Aid. That changes the stewardship stage materially. Unincorporated associations, village halls, PTAs, and CICs can still benefit from moves management, but the Gift Aid "move" described in Stage 5 is not available to you until you achieve HMRC-recognised charity status. Factor this into your donor capacity scoring.

Signal to advance: the prospect has confirmed interest in a specific programme or outcome, and you have at least one piece of personal context (their motivation, a story, a connection). Move them to cultivation.

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Stage 3: Cultivation (building strong donor relationships)

Donor cultivation is everything you do to connect with a donor before asking for a gift. The goal of cultivation is not to ask. It is to make the eventual ask feel obvious.

Specific actions:

• Send three to five planned touches over the next 90 days: an impact update, a thank-you with a specific outcome, an invitation to a small-group event, a handwritten note

• Share real data, a beneficiary story, or a behind-the-scenes update, not generic newsletter content

• Track open and click rates per donor so you can tell which touches are landing

Sample opener: "I wanted to share something that made me think of you: the reading programme just hit 200 children served this year. Your support last spring helped get us there. Here is a two-minute video from one of the families."

SMART goal example: deliver at least three meaningful touchpoints to each cultivation-stage donor over 90 days, with an average open rate above 35%.

Signal to advance: the donor has actively replied, attended an event, or shared a personal story back. They are warmed up. Move them to solicitation.

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Stage 4: Solicitation (making the right ask)

Definition: turning cultivation into a specific, well-timed ask.

Specific actions:

• Match the channel to the donor: in-person for major gifts, a personal email with a pre-filled donation link for everyone else

• Anchor the ask to a specific programme and outcome, not a general operating budget

• Where possible, convert a major-gift ask into recurring support, a £1,200 annual gift is easier to say yes to as £100 a month

• UK charity convention already uses "gift" as the sector-preferred term, so frame the ask around the impact of the gift rather than a transactional donation: "Your £100 a month funds a full classroom set."

Sample opener: "Maya, the next reading programme cohort starts in September and we are £4,000 short on books and supplies. Would you consider a £100 monthly gift for the year? That covers a full classroom set."

SMART goal example: close five recurring asks at £100 or more per month this quarter from the cultivation pool.

Signal to advance: the donor said yes (or said "not now, but ask me in six months", both are signals). Move to stewardship.

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Stage 5: Stewardship (maintaining long-term relationships)

Donor stewardship is everything you do after a donor gives to secure their continued support. The thank-you is table stakes. The relationship is the goal.

Specific actions:

• Send a personal thank-you within 48 hours, plus a Gift Aid declaration confirmation and donation acknowledgement

• For Gift Aid eligible donors, confirm that HMRC will top up their £1 gift by 25p at no extra cost to them. This is the single most powerful stewardship move a UK registered charity has, and no equivalent exists for charities that are not HMRC-recognised. (Gift Aid, GOV.UK)

• File the Gift Aid claim within the 4-year window via HMRC Charities Online. Every £100 donation becomes £125 to the charity, at no extra cost to the donor. This is the highest-return stewardship action available to a UK registered charity.

• For small cash and contactless gifts of £30 or less, use the Gift Aid Small Donations Scheme (GASDS): a 25% top-up with no declaration required, up to £8,000 per year in eligible donations. Track these separately in your CRM. (Gift Aid, GOV.UK)

• For higher-rate (40%) or additional-rate (45%) taxpayers, remind them they can claim the difference via Self Assessment, a stewardship touch that costs the charity nothing but signals expertise and care.

• Report back on impact within 90 days: where the money went, what changed

• Celebrate giving anniversaries and milestones

• Invite the donor to a private update or behind-the-scenes moment they cannot access as a non-donor

• Plan the next touch before the current one is even sent

Sample opener (90-day impact update): "Your £100 a month bought books for 12 children this quarter. Here is what one of the teachers said. I would love to bring you to the next classroom visit in October, interested?"

SMART goal example: retain 80% of recurring donors year over year and convert 20% of one-time donors into recurring givers within 12 months.

You can also turn a major-gift ask into recurring support during stewardship: a one-time donor who renews monthly becomes a long-term partner. Track open and click rates on your stewardship emails so you know which donors are still warm and which need a phone call.

Signal to re-cultivate: the donor stops opening emails for 60 days, or skips an expected renewal. That is a re-cultivation move, not a write-off.

Small-charity verdict on the five stages: do not try to perfect all five at once. Pick the weakest stage (for most small charities, it is stewardship) and fix that one first.

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How to set up your moves management system

The five stages are a framework. This section is the operating manual: how to run them inside one free donor CRM, in 20 minutes of setup and 60 minutes a week of execution.

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Decide what counts as a "move" for your organisation

A move is any intentional, logged interaction that advances the relationship. For most small charities, the working list is short: a personal email, a phone call, a handwritten note, an in-person meeting, a site visit, a small-group event, a printed report sent by post. A mass-blast newsletter is not a move. An open of a mass-blast newsletter, however, is a useful signal.

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Set portfolio size honestly

Commonly cited fundraising guidance suggests around 100 to 150 donors per gift officer for active cultivation. But that assumes the organisation has gift officers. If you do not (most small charities do not), here is the honest small-org translation: your executive director or lead fundraiser owns the top 20 to 30 relationships personally. Everyone else stays in a saved segment for batch cultivation, email, and event invitations. As the organisation grows, the personal portfolio grows. Until then, 20 to 30 is plenty.

A note for unregistered and community organisations: many groups using moves management are not yet registered charities, village halls, PTAs, CICs, unincorporated associations are all common. These groups can benefit from every stage of moves management, but the stewardship stage looks different: there is no Gift Aid claim to celebrate. Factor this into how you score donor capacity, and consider whether registering with the Charity Commission or OSCR (Scotland) might unlock the Gift Aid lever as your organisation grows.

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Handle Gift Aid inside your moves workflow

A Gift Aid declaration is itself a "move" worth tagging in your CRM. Create two tags: `gift-aid-declared` and `gift-aid-pending`. Donors without a declaration are qualification-stage candidates for a very specific move: ask them to sign one. A signed declaration is both a compliance step and a relationship signal, the donor is confirming they trust you to interact with HMRC on their behalf.

Your charity must be separately HMRC-recognised (this is distinct from registration with the Charity Commission, OSCR, or CCNI). Keep Gift Aid declarations for at least 6 years after the last donation they cover. Submit claims via HMRC Charities Online within the 4-year claim window. (Gift Aid, GOV.UK)

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Build the pipeline in your CRM with tags, filters and segments

You do not need a paid "moves management module" with a pipeline view. You can replicate one inside Zeffy's free donor management software in four steps.

• 1. Create five tags, one per stage: stage:identification, stage:qualification, stage:cultivation, stage:solicitation, stage:stewardship. Tag every active contact with exactly one stage tag.

• 2. Add a portfolio tag for personally-owned relationships: portfolio:executive-director, portfolio:board, and so on. Everyone without a portfolio tag is in batch cultivation by default.

• 3. Build one saved smart filter per stage so you can see, in one click, "everyone in cultivation, sorted by last touch date." That is your pipeline view.

• 4. Use donor history (notes, past donations, emails sent and opened) to log every touch. The next person on your team, or you three months from now, can pick up where you left off.

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Block 60 minutes a week to "do the moves"

Same time every week. Open the saved filter for each stage in order. For each donor, ask: what is the next move, when is it due, and who is doing it? Log the touch the moment you make it. Without the weekly block, the system dies in three weeks.

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Set team documentation policy (even if the team is one person)

Generally accepted best practice across small-charity fundraising operations: every interaction gets logged in the CRM within 24 hours. Notes are factual and specific, not interpretive. Who owns each donor is written down. The next move and the due date are written down. If a trustee meets a donor at an event, they log it (or email you so you log it). The reason: the moves system only works if it survives staff turnover. A handoff from a departing director to a new one should take an afternoon, not a quarter.

UK GDPR and data protection note: every logged interaction is personal data. Under UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018, your charity needs a lawful basis, usually legitimate interest, to hold cultivation notes. The Fundraising Regulator's Code of Fundraising Practice (Section 2.1.5, effective 1 November 2025) requires explicit consent before sharing donor data with third parties. Keep notes factual, not interpretive, a subject access request could surface them.

Small-charity verdict: the system above is the entire moves management product for an organisation under £500,000 income. You do not need anything else until you have multiple dedicated gift officers and 200 or more active prospects.

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Your moves management checklist

Use this checklist to set up your moves system. Fill in the blanks for your organisation as you go.

Foundation (one-time setup, about 90 minutes)

• [ ] Choose your CRM: ______________________

• [ ] Import every contact from the last 3 years

• [ ] Define what counts as a "move" for your organisation. We count: ______________________

• [ ] Decide your portfolio size. Personal portfolio owner: ______________________ Top relationships count: ______

• [ ] Create 5 stage tags: identification, qualification, cultivation, solicitation, stewardship

• [ ] Create portfolio tags for personally-owned relationships

• [ ] Create Gift Aid tags: gift-aid-declared, gift-aid-pending

• [ ] Build 5 saved smart filters, one per stage

• [ ] Tag every active contact with exactly one stage tag

Weekly review (60 minutes, same time every week)

• [ ] Weekly block scheduled on: ______________________

• [ ] Open the identification filter. Decide who advances to qualification

• [ ] Open the qualification filter. Decide who advances to cultivation

• [ ] Open the cultivation filter. Plan or send the next touch for each personal-portfolio donor

• [ ] Open the solicitation filter. Confirm asks are scheduled with a specific amount and date

• [ ] Open the stewardship filter. Send one thank-you, one impact update, or one anniversary note

• [ ] Log every touch in the donor record before you close the tab

Each new donor (do once per donor)

• [ ] Tag with the source channel (event, social, referral, peer-to-peer)

• [ ] Tag with the programme they care about

• [ ] Log first conversation: what motivated them, who they know in the organisation

• [ ] Check Gift Aid eligibility and tag as gift-aid-declared or gift-aid-pending

• [ ] Schedule the first cultivation touch within 14 days

• [ ] Set the next planned move and due date

Quarterly review

• [ ] Pull retention rate by donor cohort

• [ ] Review who went cold (60 or more days with no engagement) and plan a re-cultivation move

• [ ] Review solicitation close rate. What worked, what did not

• [ ] Confirm all Gift Aid claims are filed within the 4-year window

• [ ] Celebrate one win with the team

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Technology that makes moves management easier

You have three realistic options. The honest comparison:

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For most small organisations, spreadsheets fail at the moment your moves system most needs to survive: a staff handoff or a six-month gap in attention. A paid donor CRM seat solves that, but ~£35 to £100 or more per month is a real budget line for a small charity. The third option is the one most small charities do not realise exists.

The two UK-recognised paid CRMs worth naming are Beacon (from around £33.50 per month, rated the number one UK fundraising CRM for six years running by Fundraising Magazine, with native Gift Aid claim submission) and Donorfy (free up to 500 constituents, then around £50 per month, with broad integrations including GoCardless and JustGiving). Both handle Gift Aid claim submission natively. Neither is the wrong choice, they are simply a real budget line that the smallest charities may not have.

Zeffy's free donor management ships with the exact features moves management needs: custom tags, smart filters and saved segments (your pipeline view), donor history with notes and past donations, email from the donor dashboard with open and click stats, automated reminders, pre-filled donation forms for solicitation, recurring donation support for stewardship, and the ability to record offline donations so a cultivation meeting and a posted cheque live in the same record as an online gift. Zeffy is 100% free for charities. No platform fee, no transaction fee, no card fee. Ever. More than 100,000 organisations have raised over £2 billion on the platform without paying a penny in fees.

A note on scope: Zeffy is a fundraising platform with donor management built in, not an enterprise grant-management or case-management system. For small charities running moves management on tags, filters, and a weekly review block, that is exactly the right size.

Small-charity verdict: if you are running moves management on spreadsheets, the upgrade to a free donor CRM is the single biggest jump in reliability you can make this quarter.

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5 common moves management mistakes (and how to avoid them)

Mistake 1: Moving too fast to solicitation

The pressure to hit a fundraising target pushes you to ask before the donor is ready. They say no (or worse, a small yes followed by a lapse). Fix: require at least three cultivation touches with positive engagement before any ask above £250. Write the rule down so your future self honours it.

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Mistake 2: Not documenting interactions

Notes live in your head, in three inboxes, and in a trustee's memory. A donor mentions her daughter's name at an event; six months later, no one remembers. The relationship resets.

Fix: log every interaction in the CRM within 24 hours, what you discussed, what they care about, what the next move is. The donor CRM tracks every interaction so the next person on your team picks up exactly where you left off.

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Mistake 3: Treating all donors the same

Sending the same Christmas appeal to a £25 first-time donor and a £5,000 recurring supporter signals that you do not actually know either of them. Fix: at minimum, segment by stage and by giving level. Three messages instead of one. A small lift in personalisation, a big lift in response.

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Mistake 4: Focusing only on major-gift prospects

Major gifts are exciting and rare. The bulk of long-term income for most small charities comes from recurring small and mid-level donors. Fix: spend at least half your moves time on the cultivation and stewardship of £25 to £250 donors who could become £50 to £100 per month recurring givers. The lifetime value is often higher than a one-time £5,000 gift.

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Mistake 5: Letting stewardship lapse after the gift

The thank-you goes out. The acknowledgement goes out. Then silence until next year's appeal. The donor feels used. They give once, then drop off.

Fix: schedule the next three stewardship touches the moment the gift is logged. A 30-day thank-you with an impact preview, a 90-day update on outcomes, a 180-day invitation to something private. Build it into your CRM workflow so it happens automatically.

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Moves management best practices

Review your portfolio every two weeks

The weekly 60-minute block is for execution. Every two weeks, spend an extra 20 minutes on portfolio review: who has gone cold (no engagement in 60 days), who has warmed up unexpectedly, who is ready to advance a stage. Tag adjustments are part of the discipline.

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Have a written plan for donors who go cold

Cold does not mean gone. It means the current cultivation approach stopped working. Try a different channel: if email is silent, try a phone call. If a phone call gets voicemail, try a handwritten note. Three different channels over six weeks. If still cold, move them to the batch-cultivation segment and stop investing personal time, but do not delete them.

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Set clear goals for every interaction

Every move should have a SMART goal attached: specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, time-bound. "Send Maya the impact report by Friday so she opens it and replies with a question" is a SMART goal. "Reach out to Maya" is not.

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Segment donors for personalised engagement

Group donors by giving history, interests, and engagement level. Each segment gets messaging that resonates with their specific connection to your mission.

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Celebrate milestones and loyalty

Anniversaries of first gifts, cumulative giving thresholds ("you have now given for three years running"), birthdays. A two-line personal email beats a generic e-card. Track these in your CRM with date fields and a recurring reminder.

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Celebrate wins with your team

If you have a team, the weekly 60-minute block ends with one win shared aloud: a donor who replied warmly, a closed ask, a re-engagement after going cold. If you are working solo, write it down in a "wins" document. Moves management is a long game; visible wins are the fuel.

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Evaluate and refine quarterly

Once a quarter, look at the numbers. Retention rate by cohort. Average days from qualification to first gift. Solicitation close rate. What is working, what is not. Adjust the system, not the goal.

Small-charity verdict on best practices: if you only do two of these, do the weekly 60-minute block and the every-interaction-logged rule. Everything else compounds from those two.

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Frequently asked questions

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