Before the last day
Your fundraiser
is leaving.
The donor should not have to start over.
A practical look at the promises, introductions and unfinished conversations that need to survive a change of staff.
A resignation arrives. The executive director begins thinking about recruitment. The finance team checks the budget. Someone asks who has the password to the fundraising platform.
Meanwhile, a donor is expecting a phone call on Thursday.
The donor does not know that the organization is reassigning portfolios, revising a job description and wondering whether it can afford an interim hire. They remember a conversation with a person they trusted. Something was going to happen next.
That unfinished conversation is where I would begin.
A departing fundraiser can leave excellent records and still leave a difficult transition. Knowing what happened is different from knowing what somebody understood, what the organization promised and who has accepted responsibility for the next step. The work is to preserve that continuity without pretending a personal relationship can be transferred like a software license.
One relationship, examined closely
The gift is recorded.
The promise is easier to lose.
The people and organization in this example are fictional. It illustrates a handoff, not a client result.
Elena supports a community arts nonprofit. She has funded materials for an after-school program and recently asked whether the organization could offer a Saturday session.
Her contact, Marcus, said he would speak with the program director. He did not promise a new session. He promised an answer about what it would require.
Marcus is leaving. The database contains Elena’s gift history, contact details and a note that says, “Interested in expanding support.” A new fundraiser could read that as an invitation to send a proposal. Elena is actually waiting to learn whether the idea is workable.
The difference matters. An ambitious solicitation could arrive before the nonprofit has answered the question it was asked.
A complete gift record would not, by itself, prevent that mistake. The handoff also needs the unfinished question, the source of the information, the person supplying the answer and the date the donor was told to expect it.
That is more useful than a personality description such as “Elena needs a lot of attention.” It is also fairer to Elena. She is waiting for something the organization said it would do.
Start with the next obligation, not the largest gift.
Gift size helps an organization understand financial exposure. It does not identify every relationship that needs immediate attention.
A modest donor may be waiting for a promised acknowledgment for a memorial gift. A family may have asked not to receive public recognition. A foundation may have a reporting date next week. A long-standing supporter may have raised a concern nobody has resolved.
I would ask the outgoing fundraiser and the responsible leader to review the active commitments first: the upcoming meetings, unanswered questions, expected updates, recognition preferences and decisions still waiting on someone inside the organization. Include donors who have stopped responding, rather than letting the quiet relationships vanish from the review.
Then decide what requires a personal introduction, what can continue through the existing team and what can wait. Give that judgment a reason. “The donor knows nobody else here and is expecting an answer Friday” is a more useful priority than a red label with no explanation.
Do not send five staff members to demonstrate that the organization cares. A donor can experience that as confusion. One named contact, supported by the right people, is usually easier to understand.
Where staffing is thin, the interim owner may be the executive director or another authorized colleague. The role needs realistic capacity and a clear limit on what that person can decide. Assigning fifty conversations to someone who cannot return them is a new gap with a name attached.
The working record
Could another person make
the next call responsibly?
A usable handoff answers that question. A long export may not.
| Record | What belongs there | What to avoid |
|---|---|---|
| Purpose | The work the donor chose to support and the source of that understanding. | Assuming a past gift means interest in every future program. |
| Open commitment | What was promised, by whom, when it is due and who can fulfill it. | “Follow up soon” without an owner or a date. |
| Current decision | The question under discussion, what has been agreed and what remains undecided. | Recording an exploratory conversation as a commitment to give. |
| Contact preferences | The donor’s stated communication and recognition preferences, with their source and date. | Guessing, or treating an old preference as permanently settled. |
| Relevant history | The context needed for the next appropriate interaction, including unresolved concerns. | Gossip, speculative wealth labels or unnecessary personal detail. |
| Responsibility | A named next contact, a backup, the introduction plan and confirmation that the owner accepted. | A reassigned database field that nobody has reviewed. |
| Evidence | Links to the authoritative agreement, correspondence and approved internal records. | Multiple conflicting attachments or unsupported recollection presented as fact. |
Keep financial agreements and authoritative gift records in their proper systems. The relationship summary should point to them rather than becoming a competing version of the terms. If the summary and the agreement disagree, resolve that before the next conversation.
Facts, recollections and interpretations should look different on the page. “Elena asked about Saturday programming in her September email” is a sourced fact. “I think she may be interested in a larger gift” is an interpretation. Neither should silently become “Elena has committed to fund expansion.”
A colleague can test the record by explaining the next action back to the outgoing fundraiser. If they cannot say what is owed, who owes it and what remains uncertain, more information is needed. The test is understanding, not whether every field contains text.
Remember enough. Respect the boundary.
Institutional memory should not become a file of intimate details.
Donors sometimes share personal reasons for caring about a cause. Those conversations deserve discretion. Preserving continuity does not require copying every detail into a record available to everyone with a login.
Capture the information needed to honor the donor’s wishes and carry out the organization’s responsibilities. Apply the organization’s access and retention rules. Where a preference can be recorded without the sensitive story behind it, consider whether that is sufficient.
“Use email; the donor requested no calls this month” may be enough to guide the next contact. A widely visible account of the family circumstances behind that request may add exposure without helping the work.
The Donor Bill of Rights places confidentiality, professional relationships and truthful answers among donors’ expectations. AFP’s Code of Ethical Standards also addresses safeguarding confidential donor information and prohibits its members from taking organizational donor information to another entity. Those are professional standards, not a substitute for resolving a particular legal question.
For the transition itself, use approved organizational channels. Do not make a personal spreadsheet the unofficial backup, or circulate the entire donor database to everyone involved in hiring a replacement. Access should follow an actual responsibility.
The moment the donor notices
An introduction should carry
the conversation forward.
A donor-facing message does not need to explain the organization’s staffing process. It does need to identify the next contact and show that the unfinished work has been understood.
If the departure is planned and the people involved agree on the communication, a joint introduction can help. For Elena, the useful part is not that Priya has joined the correspondence. It is that Priya knows which answer Elena is waiting for.
Illustrative wording · Adapt to the actual facts
Elena, I will be leaving my role at the end of the month. Priya will be your contact while the organization recruits my successor.
We have reviewed your question about a Saturday arts session. Priya is speaking with the program director and will send you the feasibility update by Thursday, as we discussed. No expansion has been approved; the next step is to understand the staffing and space requirements.
I would be glad to introduce you both on a short call if that would be useful. Thank you for the care you have put into this program.
Only offer that date if Priya and the program director can meet it. A reassuring transition message that creates an unrealistic promise simply moves the problem into the next person’s inbox.
The message also leaves Elena a choice. She may welcome a call, prefer email or want time before meeting someone new. A transition is not successful because a meeting invitation was sent. The donor needs a workable route to the organization.
Some relationships will benefit from a familiar program leader or executive joining the introduction. Choose that person because they can answer the donor’s actual question, not because adding a senior title makes the email look important.
If the departure involves a sensitive employment matter, agree on an accurate, limited explanation with the responsible leadership and advisers. Staff should not improvise different stories. The donor needs continuity of service, not access to private personnel details.
The less orderly version
Sometimes there is
no handover meeting.
The fundraiser has already left, is unavailable or cannot participate. Start from what the organization can establish.
Name an interim contact and have the appropriate system owners preserve and review organizational records under existing policies. Reconstruct outstanding commitments from authorized correspondence, calendars, gift agreements, program staff and finance records. Keep unresolved points visible instead of filling them with assumptions.
Leadership should coordinate access changes through the responsible administrators. The donor-continuity task does not justify sharing passwords, using a departed employee’s identity or accessing personal accounts.
When contacting a donor, be candid about the specific gap. “I understand you were discussing a program visit. I have the proposed dates, but I would like to confirm whether one was agreed” is better than pretending to remember a conversation you did not attend.
Do the internal homework first. Asking the donor to retell years of history because nobody reviewed the available records makes the change feel like their administrative burden.
Where a commitment may have been missed, acknowledge what you can verify, explain who is resolving it and give a realistic next update. Avoid a broad assurance that nothing will change if the organization does not yet know that.
The aim is to establish a reliable next interaction. A perfect reconstruction of the past may be impossible. Clear ownership of the next promise is still possible.
The relationship has not transferred just because the portfolio has.
On the outgoing employee’s final day, a manager may see a neatly reassigned set of records. That is evidence of an administrative task completed. It says little about whether the people receiving those records are ready.
Review the actual loose ends after the transition. Did the promised update go out? Did the donor receive the new contact’s details? Has someone accepted each open question? Are program and finance colleagues aware of the commitments that involve them? Which records still depend on an unverified recollection?
Let the pace follow the work. An answer due tomorrow needs attention tomorrow. A donor who requested a quiet month should not receive three calls to satisfy an internal transition checklist.
A useful review can be short: open commitments due, commitments fulfilled, overdue items and unresolved ownership. Keep the specific donor detail within the authorized team. Leadership can often see whether the process is working without receiving every private conversation.
Later giving may help assess how relationships developed, but it does not isolate the effect of the staff change. Program performance, household circumstances, campaign timing and other influences may also matter. Do not declare the handoff a success solely because a gift arrived, or a failure solely because one did not.
For the substance of the next impact update, the companion article The Donor Report Should Make the Next Gift More Intelligent addresses what supporters should learn from reporting. This handoff work makes sure somebody remains responsible for delivering it.
What should remain after the goodbye
The institution needs to remember
what its people promised.
This is not an argument against close personal relationships. Fundraisers should be able to know donors, exercise judgment and build trust. The organization should support that work well enough that one person’s departure does not erase the context.
The longstanding concern is documented in CompassPoint and the Haas, Jr. Fund’s 2013 UnderDeveloped study, which examined turnover, vacancies and weak fundraising infrastructure. Its age matters: it is evidence of an established organizational problem, not a current turnover estimate.
The practical response starts before a resignation. Keep active commitments visible. Introduce colleagues when their role is useful. Give staff time to maintain records that another person can understand. Make the donor’s connection to the work broader than one inbox without making the relationship impersonal.
When the change comes, the donor should encounter someone who knows what matters, tells the truth about what they do not know and follows through on the next agreed step.
Elena is still waiting for the answer about Saturday. Someone should be able to give it to her.
Work with Rob
Bring the transition
you need to make work.
My nonprofit and association advisory work connects leadership, communication and operating responsibilities. We can examine the relationship gaps, clarify ownership and make the next conversation easier for the people who need to have it.
Discuss the donor handoffFor broader donor development, explore fundraising consulting and advisory.