Elevating the Donor Meeting: From Update to Co-Design Session
Scaling Major Gifts. Strategies, action steps, and ideas for scaling major gifts by Tammy Zonker, Major Gift Expert & Keynote Speaker.
Most major donor meetings still get scheduled like status reports. We open with thanks, walk the donor through what their gift accomplished, share a few photos, and ask a soft question about next steps. It feels safe. It feels respectful. And in 2026, with donors who are more sophisticated, more selective, and more time-pressed than ever, it is quietly costing us.
What I keep seeing in coaching calls is this. The donors who stay close, give more, and bring in their friends are the donors who feel like co-creators, not audience members. They want to sit beside you and design something together. The good news is that you do not need a new title, a new tool, or a new strategy to make that shift. You need a different kind of meeting.
I call it the co-design session. And it is the single biggest upgrade I am recommending to fundraisers right now.
What to focus on next week
Here are the five moves that turn a routine donor meeting into a co-design session.
1. Replace "update" with "design." Walk into the meeting with a real problem or opportunity, not a slide of program statistics. "I'd love your thinking on how we approach X" beats "Here’s what your gift did" every time.
2. Show your reasoning, not just your results. Bring the questions you’re wrestling with. Donors at this level want to know how you think, what you’re weighing, and where you feel stuck.
3. Build shared understanding before exploring options. Spend the first part of the meeting making sure you both see the situation the same way. A common picture is the foundation for a real decision.
4. Offer two or three real options, not one polished ask. Give the donor something to react to, compare, and reshape. Options invite agency. A single ask invites a yes or no.
5. Capture the conversation while it is still warm. Decisions made together get lost when they live only in our heads. A short, structured follow-up turns a great meeting into a real plan.
A Quick Story
I worked with a small healthcare nonprofit that was preparing to ask a long-time donor for a $250,000 gift toward a new program. Their plan was a polished presentation with one big number at the end. We rebuilt the meeting as a co-design session. The director walked in with three program shapes, the trade-offs of each, and a question: "Which of these feels most like the work you want to be part of?" The donor chose option two, then asked if she could fund an evaluation piece on top of it. The final commitment came in at $400,000, and she introduced two friends within the month. Nothing changed about the cause. Everything changed about the meeting.
Try this next week
Pick one donor meeting on your calendar in the next two weeks. Just one. Before that meeting, do three things.
First, write down the real question you want this donor's thinking on. Not the ask. The question.
Second, sketch two or three options the donor could weigh in on. A page, a napkin, a Google Doc. Rough is fine. Rough is good.
Third, ask your AI assistant to help you draft a one-page recap template you can fill in within an hour of the meeting ending. Keep it simple: what we agreed on, what we’re still exploring, what comes next, by when. I use AI to clean up my notes and turn them into a tight follow-up email the same day. It saves me an hour and tightens the loop while the meeting is still alive in the donor's mind.
Want to take a deeper dive?
In this week's episode of The Intentional Fundraiser podcast, “Designing Impact Together with Donors,” I walk through the full co-design meeting flow, the donor psychology behind why it works so well, and the simple tools and digital aids that make it feel natural. If you have ever left a donor meeting thinking "that was fine, but we did not really get anywhere," this episode is for you.
Listen to the full episode below.
I’d love to hear from you
When you sit down to schedule your next donor visit, what’s the first goal that comes to mind? Connect with me on LinkedIn and tell me. I read every note, and I learn from each one.
Take one meeting this month and run it as a co-design session. Just one. I think you’ll be surprised by what your donor brings to the table when you finally invite them to the table.
Keep scaling,
Tammy Zonker
Author of Calling All Heroes
Founder of Fundraising Transformed
President of Modern Institute for Charitable Giving
ps– Learn more about our upcoming Excellence in Major Gift Fundraising Seminar