Not long ago, a potential university benefactor excitedly phoned one of our development officers. It was the call we had been waiting for. "I think I'm ready," they declared, "let's move on to the solicitation stage!"

As you can guess, this never happened.

In fact, the contemporary moves management system rarely reflects the fluid, uncertain pace of life and unpredictable nature of institutional support. As effective as the traditional design has been, its repetition in customer relationship management (CRM) software manuals, best practice webinars and the work of countless fundraising shops has codified — perhaps calcified — a once novel idea. At its best, the system can help organize a nonprofit’s attempts to more greatly incorporate a supporter into the life of an institution. But at its worst, the moves management system can become a straitjacket, reducing the freedom of benefactor engagement to a rigid series of predetermined steps.

A Moves Management History?

It wasn’t always this way. The original moves management structure grew out of a need to help development offices better understand how to take donors on a journey towards deeper organizational involvement. In the 1970s and 1980s, Buck Smith and Dave Dunlop developed the system many organizations recognize today, bringing thoughtful shape to an unformed mass.

In a 2019 interview, the now-retired Dunlop reflects on the history of a system he helped create. For Dunlop, the core of moves management aims at “inspiring people to do the things that we believe they would want to do anyway,” he explains. “Really helping them accomplish what is consistent with their values and interests.” According to Dunlop, it was never intended to be focused on “making a game of moves,” but rather on the real animating passions of supporters.

The system that Dunlop further developed at Cornell in the 1980s diffused to fundraising teams worldwide, though tracking its precise history proves elusive. In my attempt to reconstruct the intellectual history of the moves management system, I encountered two major obstacles.

First, the problem of sources. A traditional construction of an idea’s history would focus on the printed texts that help situate its discursive presence. While fundraising manuals and practical how-to guides have been commonplace for several decades, there remains far less textual evidence of the system’s development than desired for a fully formed historical picture. Instead, pragmatic guides to moves management have tended to define and summarize accepted practice. 

Second, the problem of discourse. An idea’s textual history is ideally situated within a discourse or evolving conversation. With a plethora of pragmatic discussions of moves management, theoretical conversations have been largely kept outside of the print world.

In short, the history of moves management has quietly unfolded in the database coding, office conversations and fundraising operations across countless shops in innumerable nonprofits. Its history reflects a largely unrecorded though lived-in encounter with the practicalities of daily fundraising.

A Codified System

However, without a robust theoretical discourse, moves management today has mostly settled on a series of serviceable — if not entirely limited — discrete and predictable steps. Ask any nonprofit professional, and you will likely hear that the process of identification, qualification, cultivation, solicitation, stewardship represents the moves management system.

The repetition of this formula is easy to find. White papers from BlackBaud and Ellucian as well as online guides from popular software providers such as DonorSearch and Virtuous confirm this tried-and-true moves management system. Indeed, it may be hard today to imagine anything else.

With a flourishing of CRM software and a seemingly endless supply of new technology vendors, a simple, easily definable moves management system helps streamline the messiness of fundraising into a predictable pattern. Creating order out of chaos has its own appeal, and the simplicity of the moves management system allows for greater ease of strategy and implementation.

Yet the gains made in the name of efficiency unintentionally produced the loss of a richer picture. The current moves management system focuses on a cyclical development in which a financial contribution represents the pinnacle of a benefactor’s relationship. Everything revolves around a monetary gift. But what if this represents merely one aspect of a supporter’s complex relationship to a nonprofit?

A New Path: The Possibilities of “Commitment”

To move forward, we must first go backwards. In a 1993 essay collection on developing major gift programs, Dunlop outlined his vision of moves management. Dunlop summarizes his system in seven steps: identification, information, awareness, understanding, caring, involvement and commitment. At first glance, his system, mirrors the modern-day version before quickly revealing a remarkably flexible and holistic approach.

Dunlop’s vision radically decenters the role of a financial contribution. “Commitment,” a wonderfully ambiguous term for the final stage, signals a multitude of possible outcomes. By moving from caring to involvement to commitment, Dunlop’s system moves supporters from their passions towards an embedded stance within an institutional lifecycle. In other words, Dunlop’s vision seeks to develop the inner dimensions of support before moving to their external expressions.

From an inner passion to outer resolve, Dunlop’s vision prioritizes understanding, caring and the value of experience. In the same article, he highlights the need for a “nurturing” fundraising that optimizes “access” to a range of “experiences,” all which center on a “commitment to the institution and the purpose of the gift.” Dunlop doesn’t dismiss the value of a gift. However, he frees the gift from the constraints of any predetermined system. Now, who can say what a “commitment” will look like from a given supporter? It is hopefully and joyfully indeterminate.

Fundraisers today can learn much from Dunlop’s wisdom. By recognizing that the modern moves management system at times fails to capture the psychology, complexity and inner journey of a nonprofit supporter, a renewed focus on nurturing animating passions while emphasizing powerful experiences of an institution’s mission can lead to an enriched donor journey. Whether working within, alongside or completely outside the bounds of the traditional moves management formula, an appreciation for the multiple ways that supporters commit to a nonprofit will help generate far deeper engagement. A donor’s journey may be mirrored in a more predictable CRM system, but it will always be lived in the often unpredictable movements of the heart.

Source

David Dunlop, "Strategic Management of a Major Gift Program," in "Developing an Effective Major Gift Program: From Managing Staff to Soliciting Gifts," eds. Roy Muir and Jerry May (Washington: Council for Advancement and Support of Education, 1993), 8-9 cited.