141. Designing Impact Together with Donors
About this episode
A few years ago, I sat in a beautifully prepared donor meeting. Polished slides. A bound proposal. A great director who had practiced her ask for two weeks.
About twenty minutes in, the donor leaned back, smiled politely, and said, "This all looks wonderful. But I feel like you brought me a brochure, not a conversation."
She was right. We had built the perfect update. What she wanted was a seat at the table.
In 2026, donors are more sophisticated and more time-pressed than ever. The ones who matter most are not asking for better presentations. They are asking to be invited into the work. I call the answer a co-design session. It is the single biggest meeting upgrade I am teaching fundraisers right now.
What changes when you stop "updating" and start "designing"
Co-design is not a new ask script. It is a different kind of meeting. Here are the lenses I use when I help a team rebuild one.
1. Agency replaces audience. A finished proposal quietly tells the donor, "We already figured this out." Real options invite them to think with you. Leaders give more when they get to lead.
2. Identity replaces transaction. People give to causes, but they give big and give again to identities. Co-design lets the donor become "the person who helped shape this."
3. Trust replaces pitch. When the conversation is "I am thinking with you," not "I am selling you," the donor lowers their guard. The ask still happens. It just happens differently, because the donor helped build what they are funding.
4. Conversation replaces choreography. You stop rehearsing a presentation and start preparing for a real exchange. Less polish, more substance. Donors at this level can feel the difference within five minutes.
5. Follow-up replaces forgetting. The best ideas from donor meetings die in our notebooks. Co-design only pays off when what you heard becomes a real plan within twenty-four hours.
Try this before your next donor meeting
You don't need a new strategy to run a co-design session. You need a different ninety minutes of prep. Here are three concrete actions you can take in under an hour.
First, write down the real question you want this donor's thinking on. Not the ask. The question. "How should we shape this?" "What are we missing?" "Which version of this feels most like the work you want to be part of?" One sentence is enough.
Second, sketch two or three real options. Different scopes, different price points, different timelines. Put them on one page, three columns. Cost, scope, outcome. Rough is fine. Rough is honest.
Third, set up your follow-up before the meeting. Build a simple recap template: what we agreed on, what we are still exploring, what I owe you, by when. I use my AI assistant to turn voice-memo notes into a clean recap and a same-day thank-you email. The donor receives a thoughtful note while the meeting is still alive in their mind. That single habit is one of the highest-leverage moves in major gifts work right now.
A small encouragement before you build your prep. Co-design is not just for your largest donors. I have used this approach with a $25,000 supporter and a multimillion-dollar funder in the same week, and the mechanics scale up and down. The size of the gift does not change. The size of the relationship does.
I also want to name something fundraisers ask me all the time. "What if the donor takes the conversation somewhere I did not plan for?" In my experience, that is the gift. The unexpected direction the donor offers is almost always richer than the plan I walked in with. Stay open. Take notes. Trust the conversation.
I'd love to hear from you
If you have run a co-design meeting before, or if this idea is brand new to you, I want to know.
Connect with me on LinkedIn and tell me what is on your mind. What is the one donor meeting on your calendar in the next two weeks that could be reshaped?
Pick that meeting. Walk in with a question, not a slide. Bring two or three real options. Let your donor design with you.
This is the work I have watched transform fundraisers, donors, and entire organizations. It starts with one meeting. Make this one yours.
“Donors are asking to be invited into the work.”
Tammy Zonker, Major Gift Expert, Keynote Speaker, Author
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