I have 81 first cousins.

And we’re close.

Not Facebook-friends close. Close enough that when they come to my house, they know which cabinet to open for a cup without asking.

That might be especially surprising, considering none of them live in North Carolina.

Every summer, somewhere between 20 and 30 members of my father’s side of the family come to visit for a week. Almost all of them stay at our house. We spend our days on the lake or by the pool, eat together, sometimes in, sometimes out, have a few drinks, tell stories we’ve probably told a hundred times before, and mostly just enjoy being together.

We’ve been doing it for 16 years, missing only one summer during the pandemic.

It’s loud. It’s crowded. It requires a lot of groceries, linens, and sunscreen.

And I wouldn’t change it for anything.

My mother’s side isn’t much different. For New Year’s Eve 1999, 32 hotel rooms' worth of us headed to Disney World to welcome the new millennium together.

And weddings? In my family, 250 people is practically intimate. Thinking a destination wedding will keep the guest list small? Think again. We’ve had over 200 family members travel everywhere from Ireland to Las Vegas.

But weddings are only part of it. In my family, the occasion doesn’t have to be big to be worth the trip. Birthdays, graduations, anniversaries or simply a chance to be together, can put someone on a plane.

The older I get, the more I realize something important: we aren’t close simply because we’re related.

Being family created the connection.

The relationship came from years of choosing to show up—and keep showing up.

That has made me think differently about a word we use constantly in nonprofit work: cultivation.

We cultivate donors and prospects. We cultivate board members, volunteers, community partners and stakeholders.

Sometimes, though, I wonder whether we’ve made cultivation more complicated than it needs to be.

Meaningful relationships require time and attention. They grow through conversations that don’t always have an agenda and the ordinary moments between the milestones. They depend on knowing what matters to someone and staying connected even when you need nothing.

My cousins don’t know where the cups are because they attended one particularly successful family gathering. They know because they’ve been in my kitchen time and time again.

Trust develops in the same way.

And that distinction matters for nonprofit organizations.

A donor who hears from us primarily when the annual appeal arrives may support the organization, but do they feel connected to it?

Receiving a packet before every meeting may keep a board member informed, but does it ensure they feel genuinely engaged in the mission or understand how their own interests and talents can contribute?

A community partner may work alongside us on an initiative, but have we taken the time to understand their priorities as well as our own?

Even within our organizations, we can spend hours together in meetings without investing in the relationships that help us navigate disagreement, change, and difficult decisions with trust.

We can’t manufacture relationships the moment we suddenly need them.

You don’t show up only for the wedding. You don’t call only when you need something. You make the trip for the less significant occasions, too. You stay for dinner, ask questions, and hear the same stories again. You make room at the table.

Over time, those seemingly small investments become relationships strong enough to withstand distance, change, and time.

For nonprofit leaders, perhaps that means taking another look at what we call relationship building.

Who hears from us mostly when we need something?

Whose interests and motivations do we genuinely know?

Which important relationships have quietly become transactional?

And where could a cup of coffee, a phone call, a handwritten note, or simply more time spent listening accomplish more than another perfectly crafted communication?

Strategy is important. Good relationship management requires intentionality, thoughtful communication, and follow-through.

But strategy should help us build authentic relationships, not replace them.

In fundraising, particularly, we can become so focused on moving someone through a pipeline that we forget there is a person in the pipeline. Cultivation isn’t simply about getting closer to an ask. It’s about understanding where someone’s passions and our mission genuinely intersect.

The same is true with boards, teams, and community partners. Strong relationships give us the trust to have harder conversations, ask better questions, navigate change and accomplish more together.

Perhaps that’s one of the greatest lessons my enormous family has taught me.

Connection may bring people together.

But closeness comes from what happens next, from continuing to show up for the milestones and all the ordinary moments in between.

Whether we’re talking about family, leadership, philanthropy or community, the strongest relationships are built the same way:

Intentionally, consistently and over time.

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