Review a Major-Gifts Pipeline

Review a major-gifts pipeline by finding relationships that lack evidence, an accountable owner, a defined next move, or a valid reason to remain in their current stage. Aurora can prepare the exception queue from permitted Finta context. Development professionals decide whether each relationship advances, stays, recycles, or stops.

What this workflow is for

This is a recurring pipeline-quality review for an existing major-gifts process. If the organization still needs stage definitions and exit criteria, start with How to Build a Major Donor Pipeline.

The review should improve four things:

It should not estimate capacity, affinity, readiness, or gift likelihood.

Before you begin

Confirm:

• The donor CRM that owns identity, gifts, pledges, proposals, restrictions, preferences, and official fundraising reporting.
• The approved major-gifts stages and evidence required to enter or leave each one.
• Which donor and prospect context may be used in Finta.
• Who can view, change, or export each category of information.
• Which donor-facing actions require manager, legal, privacy, or other review.
• The safe stop when identity, preference, evidence, or ownership is unclear.

Step 1: Build an exception queue

Select the active major-gifts records in Finta CRM or the approved working set. Ask Aurora to flag records with one or more of these conditions:

• No relationship owner.
• No dated next action.
• The next-action date has passed without a recorded outcome.
• No evidence supports the current stage.
• A donor question or organizational promise remains open.
• A possible board or community path has not been verified.
• The Finta record conflicts with the donor CRM.
• A communication preference or privacy constraint needs review.

Aurora’s job is to assemble the review material and expose gaps. It should not rank people by how likely they are to give.

Step 2: Prepare a relationship brief

For each exception, ask Aurora to inspect only available, permitted Finta sources and supported connections. Require this structure:

1. Identity and current stage.
2. Accountable owner and approved contributors.
3. Last verified interaction with source and date.
4. Interests or concerns the person explicitly stated.
5. Open stewardship commitments, questions, or requests.
6. Available relationship paths and their evidence.
7. Conflicts, unknowns, and required verification.
8. One proposed next action or deliberate stop.

Aurora can synthesize sources, prepare a brief or draft, propose supported record changes, and complete only supported workspace actions within available permissions. External messages remain subject to human review.

Step 3: Apply observable stage criteria

The organization’s exact stage model should control. A practical review might use:

A stage records a team decision under a defined process. It does not describe a person’s private intent.

Step 4: Choose one disposition

• Advance: state the evidence, new stage, owner, and dated next action.
• Maintain: state why the current stage remains accurate and set the next review.
• Recycle: state what ended, what context should be retained, and when review may be appropriate.
• Hold: state the permission, evidence, timing, or internal dependency required to resume.
• Close: state the reason and honor any privacy, preference, or retention requirement.

Do not leave records in an active stage with “follow up later” as the only plan.

Step 5: Prepare and reconcile the accepted work

Aurora can prepare tasks, a meeting brief, an introduction request, or an unsent follow-up draft when supported context and tools are available. The relationship owner verifies the recipient, sources, facts, tone, and permission.

Then reconcile accepted outcomes:

• Official gift, pledge, proposal, restriction, preference, and constituent changes go to the donor CRM.
• Approved relationship owner, stage, context, and next action remain current in the working layer.
• Sensitive or unnecessary copies are removed according to organizational policy.

Worked example: a cultivation record with no next move

A prospective donor has remained in Cultivation for 90 days. The donor CRM shows no gift or proposal change. Finta contains an approved meeting note stating that the person asked to receive the program’s annual outcomes report.

Aurora flags the missing next action and prepares a brief. The development team verifies the request, assigns the report to the program lead, and asks the gift officer to prepare a short cover note after the report is ready. The record remains in Cultivation with an owner and date. The team does not infer that the report request signals willingness to make a gift.

Ethics and privacy checklist

The Association of Fundraising Professionals Code of Ethical Standards emphasizes accurate communication, confidentiality, donor privacy, donor intent, and proper stewardship.

• Use only authorized information for a legitimate purpose.
• Keep donor preferences and official fundraising data authoritative.
• Do not equate wealth, giving history, or social proximity with intent.
• Preserve conflicting evidence and uncertainty.
• Require human judgment for stage changes, ask strategy, introductions, and messages.
• Give the relationship owner and donor-data steward a way to correct the record.

Limits and disclosure

Finta is not donor accounting, gift processing, tax receipting, wealth screening, grant management, or a gift-likelihood model. It cannot know private donor intent or guarantee a response, introduction, or gift. The nonprofit remains responsible for its donor CRM, privacy policy, ethical practice, records, and donor-facing actions.

Run a pipeline review that ends in accountable work

Use Finta to surface pipeline exceptions, assemble permitted relationship context, and prepare the next action for human review. Explore Finta for nonprofit development teams.

Sources

• Blackbaud: moves management overview
• Association of Fundraising Professionals Code of Ethical Standards
• Finta Aurora
• Finta CRM
• Finta Networks