Building Cross-Functional Major Gift Teams
Scaling Major Gifts. Strategies, action steps, and ideas for scaling major gifts by Tammy Zonker, Major Gift Expert & Keynote Speaker.
How Do You Build a Cross-Functional Major Gift Team?
You build a cross-functional major gift team by identifying the internal partners who touch a major donor's journey (programs, finance, communications, IT, and executive leadership), giving each of them a clear role in insight, storytelling, modeling, or stewardship, and meeting on a regular, focused rhythm around your top donors. If you lead major gifts and feel like you are carrying transformational gifts on your own, this approach gives you a repeatable way to bring the right people in without adding more meetings than your week can hold.
This newsletter is for major gift officers, development directors, and executive directors who want to stop chasing information from other departments and start building it into the way your organization works. After reading, you will know who belongs on your internal coalition, how to run a meeting that respects everyone's time, and where to start if you have never tried this before.
Let’s get into it
Major gift work in 2026 asks more of us than it used to. Donors want real impact data. Boards want equity built into stewardship. Compliance and privacy rules touch nearly everything we do with donor information. And donors themselves ask sharper questions and expect real answers.
I have watched gift officers try to carry all of that alone. They become the translator between the donor and the program team, the one chasing finance for a budget number, the one guessing at what IT can pull from the database. It is exhausting, and it will not scale if you want to grow your program instead of just protecting what you already have.
What to focus on next week
Map your internal players. List who touches your top 10 to 20 donors in any way: program staff, finance, communications, IT or data, and your executive director or CEO.
Clarify roles in the donor journey. Decide who helps with insight (finance and data), storytelling (programs and communications), financial modeling (finance), and stewardship follow-through (you and leadership).
Set a meeting rhythm that works. Short, focused, and outcome-driven beats long and comprehensive every time.
Get everyone looking at the same donor picture. A shared dashboard or simple donor list does more for alignment than another email chain.
Start small. One coalition meeting focused on your biggest prospects is enough to prove the concept.
A Quick Story
I worked with a gift officer who was trying to close a six-figure gift almost entirely on her own. She kept hitting walls. The program team had impact numbers she did not know existed. Finance had a budget projection that would have answered the donor's biggest question weeks earlier. Once the gift officer started a 30-minute monthly meeting with one person from each area, focused only on her top donors, the gift closed in half the time she expected. Nothing about the donor changed. What changed was who was in the room.
Try this next week
Pick your top 10 to 20 donors and identify one person from programs, one from finance, and one from communications who has information that would help you steward them better. Send a short invite for a 30-minute meeting using the coalition agenda below. Keep the first meeting focused on just three donors so it stays manageable.
Simple coalition meeting agenda (30 minutes):
Review 3 to 5 priority donors (10 minutes)
Program update: what is new that these donors would want to know (5 minutes)
Finance update: budget or impact numbers relevant to these gifts (5 minutes)
Next steps and who owns what (10 minutes)
Want to take a deeper dive?
In this week's podcast episode, "It Takes a Village: Internal Partners in Major Gifts," I walk you through a real story of a gift that took a whole team to close and gives you a fuller picture of who should be at your table and why.
Listen to the full episode below.
I’d love to hear from you
Who outside of development is quietly essential to your biggest gifts right now? Connect with me on LinkedIn and tell me. I read every response, and your answer might shape a future episode.
Building this kind of internal partnership takes patience, but I promise it pays you back many times over. You do not have to carry your biggest gifts alone.
Keep scaling,
Tammy Zonker
Major Gift Expert + Keynote Speaker
Founder + President of Fundraising Transformed
President of Modern Institute for Charitable Giving
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Frequently Asked Questions
Q1. Who is this approach best suited for?
This approach is designed for major gift officers and development directors who want to grow transformational gifts without carrying every relationship alone. It works especially well if you already have a short list of top donors identified and at least basic support from your executive director.
Q2. How much time should I expect this to take each week?
Most fundraisers can get started with about one hour a week focused on cross-functional coordination, mostly a single short meeting plus a little prep. The more important piece is consistency, protecting that time on your calendar so it does not get pushed aside by internal noise.
Q3. What if my organization is small and I wear multiple hats?
The principles still apply, but scale the tactics. Start with a 15-minute check-in with one colleague from finance or programs about your top 5 donors, and expand from there.
Q4. How do I know if it's working?
Look for early signals like faster answers to donor questions, fewer surprises in donor conversations, and clearer notes in your CRM about program and financial context. Over time, you should see this reflected in larger average gifts and stronger multi-year commitments.
Q5. Where does AI fit into this, if at all?
AI is there to reduce friction, not replace your relationships. Use it for tasks like summarizing program updates into donor-ready language or turning coalition meeting notes into follow-up emails, while keeping the human work of listening, discernment, and relationship-building firmly in your hands.