Donors Give When They Feel Known — What Happened After One Asked “What Do You Want?”

At EverTrue, we believe discovery isn’t about extracting information. It’s about building a relationship, one honest conversation at a time — the human at the center of fundraising, not the spreadsheet. But too many gift officers are handed a portfolio and a script, and the conversation never gets past capacity and interest. In a recent webinar, Mark Arcemont of Texas Health Resources Foundation (THR) and Sarah Burdi and John Donovan of Accordant showed what changes when you slow down and actually listen — including the story of a donor whose first words were “What do you want?”

The chat agreed. We got more thoughtful questions than we had time to answer live, so we went back to the panel and got real answers to two that came up again and again.

First, a Quick Recap

If you missed the session (or want the highlight reel before diving into the Q&A):

• Invitations get further than questions. “Tell me what’s most important to you” opens a door. “What causes are you passionate about?” closes one.
• Prep takes 3 minutes, not 30. What do I already know, what do I want to know, and what’s my opening line — that’s the whole framework.
• A pivot isn’t a subject change. Acknowledge what the donor said, reflect it back, then invite them deeper.
• Closing has three parts: appreciation, reflection, and a next step — even if that step is just permission to stay in touch.
• It worked. Over six months, Texas Health Resources Foundation reached 253 prospects, made nearly 500 touchpoints, earned 52 face-to-face visits, and added 15 new prospects to the major gift pipeline.

Now, the questions.

“What happens to the people who don’t make the major gift pipeline?”

Not every discovery conversation ends in a major gift prospect — but what does that actually look like on the other side? Are those donors disqualified? Just unresponsive? What happens to them next?

Mark Arcemont, who led this work at Texas Health Resources Foundation (THR), drew a clear line between the two:

Disqualification happens when a conversation actually gives you the answer. Competing family or financial priorities, deep commitments to other organizations, limited interest in healthcare giving at the major gift level — these are real reasons, and they’re useful information, not failures. Most of these donors stay in the fundraiser’s portfolio, just recategorized as not currently qualified for the campaign. Many of them told THR they’d keep giving annually, and that relationship stays intact.

Unresponsiveness is different, and it doesn’t get treated as a no. THR doesn’t reach out indefinitely — after a series of attempts across different channels, an unresponsive donor moves out of the assigned portfolio and back into the general pool. But the relationship doesn’t close. They keep receiving Foundation communications, which means the door stays open even if nobody’s actively knocking on it right now.

As Mark put it: “A lack of response is information too, but it doesn’t necessarily close the door.”

“How do I handle someone who opens with ‘What is this call actually about?'”

This one comes up in almost every discovery conversation eventually — the donor who’s clearly bracing for an ask and lets you know it before you’ve even gotten to your first question.

Sarah Burdi and John Donovan’s advice: don’t dodge it, and don’t rush past it into your questions. Answer it directly, lower the temperature, and then use curiosity to bring the conversation back to them. Something like:

“That’s a fair question. I’m not calling today to ask you for a gift. I really wanted to learn a little more about you, your experience with [organization], and what matters to you when it comes to health care and our community. Can I ask how your connection with us began?”

A few principles behind that response:

• Acknowledge instead of evade. If they’re skeptical, answer the actual question they asked.
• Position before you probe. Give them a reason to understand why you’re interested in them before you ask anything else.
• Don’t over-explain. A long defense starts to sound like you’re trying to convince them of something.
• Curiosity, not qualification. Once the concern is answered, ask something genuinely open — not a checklist question in disguise.
• Follow their lead. If they say “Honestly, I just give because my wife was treated there,” that’s the whole conversation opening up. Take it.

The short version: answer the concern first, plainly, then redirect. The transparency itself is often what lowers the skepticism enough to let the real conversation start.

Mark shared an example of exactly this playing out at Texas Health Resources. A colleague reached out to a longtime annual giving society donor, whose first response was blunt: “What do you want?” Rather than push past it, the colleague thanked him for his loyalty, shared a bit about the impact of his giving, and simply offered to be a resource if he ever needed one. No ask. No agenda beyond that.

Five months later, that same colleague reached out again — this time to invite him to lunch, celebrating their shared birthday month. He said yes.

Over lunch, the conversation went somewhere neither of them expected. They talked about his connection to Texas Health, and he shared something he hadn’t before: years earlier, his family had lost a granddaughter at 13 months old. The team extended an invitation to an upcoming hospital gathering for International Bereaved Mother’s Day — a space for families affected by pregnancy and infant loss, including a butterfly release in memory of the children they’d lost.

That’s the whole philosophy in one story — the same one behind everything we believe about discovery: generosity isn’t unlocked by finding the right script. It’s realized when someone feels seen, and given room to answer in their own time. Nobody got there by asking what his capacity was. They got there by being patient enough to let “what do you want?” turn into something real.