Summer Isn't Slow Season, It's Strategy Season: A Major Donor Fundraiser's Guide
Summer is often called a quiet period in major donor fundraising. People take holidays, schedules flex around school hours and working patterns, and meetings and calls with donors become less frequent. It is also one of the richest windows in the fundraising calendar. It gives us time to stop, pause and reflect, and to make sure everything is in place for fundraising success. Here are five ways to use it.
Shift From Asking to Connecting
Great engagement is crucial to fundraising success. A well thought through engagement calendar ensures you are connecting with all the donors in your portfolio on a regular basis. Too often we engage with donors and prospects in a reactive way, when a more strategic engagement plan is far more effective in building strong relationships. Summer is an ideal time to create a 12-month engagement calendar (if you do not have one already) and plot the key events, dates and documents you want to share with your portfolio.
Try this: block out an afternoon a week purely for donor check-ins. No asks, no pitch. Just genuine conversation about how they are doing, what they are seeing in the world, and what is on their mind philanthropically.
Deepen Your Donor Due Diligence
With fewer meetings crowding your calendar, check that what you know about your donors and prospects is up to date. Every charity is responsible for carrying out proportionate checks to ensure that any donations offered or received are not from individuals subject to restrictions, prohibitions or sanctions. Good fundraising programmes make sure due diligence is not done once; it is repeated and updated on a regular basis. The 2025 Code of Fundraising Practice sets out what proportionate looks like.
Over summer you could review your portfolio and find out:
Where are your due diligence checks saved?
Have your donors' or prospects' financial or relevant personal circumstances changed?
If your charity has a RAG rating, or sectors and industries it is not prepared to accept donations from, is the list up to date? Are your donors or prospects involved with any activities listed?
Are you familiar with what you need to do if an existing donor or prospect does not pass your due diligence checks?
Templates, Tools and Talking Points
When things are hectic, having solid templates to fall back on prevents panic and stress. Summer is the perfect time to make sure you have a suite of major donor templates to use and adapt. Consider grab-and-go templates for donor meetings, capturing follow-up actions, solicitation and cultivation plans, and gift agreements.
Try this: create boilerplate text for your key funding opportunities for major donors. Include beneficiary numbers, scope of projects, measures of success and any funding gaps. You will then have all the key programmatic information easily to hand for when you next speak or write to donors and prospects.
Work on Your Donor Solicitation Plans
Summer's breathing room is exactly when you should be building your roadmap for the rest of your financial year and into the next. Use the time to review every donor and prospect you are forecasting a gift from this year. Work out the steps, actions and activity you need to make happen so that the donor or prospect is ready for an ask, and so the ask succeeds at the level you are asking for. If your solicitation planning needs a framework, the 7 steps of major donor fundraising is the place to start.
Do not forget: every piece of donor communication, whether it comes from them or from you, provides insight and a record of their journey with your charity. This information is priceless (and some of it is a requirement of the Fundraising Regulator), so take the time to log all emails, letters, appeals, asks made and donor restrictions safely.
Take Care of Yourself
Burnout is real for fundraisers, and summer is a natural moment to recharge. A rested major donor fundraiser builds better relationships than an exhausted one. Use any quieter periods in your calendar to take leave, adjust your start and finish times, and make space to reflect.
Summer Is an Investment Period
Summer is not a pause button on major gifts fundraising; it is an investment period. The relationship building, research and planning you do now will make the asks you make later feel natural instead of transactional. Great fundraisers make sure donors do not remember the ask; they make sure donors remember how the fundraiser made them feel.
If you want to take stock of the bigger picture while you have the space, our blog High Value Fundraising: Are You Making the Most of It? is the natural next step.
How healthy is your major donor programme?
The Major Donor Scorecard asks twenty yes or no questions and gives you a clear snapshot of where your programme is strong and where it needs attention. It is free. If summer is your moment to take stock, start here.