Private meetings with top contributors turn into strategy brainstorming sessions. High-priced dinner fundraisers are transformed into impromptu focus groups.

During a July lunch at a Southampton, N.Y., estate, he spent at least an hour asking the 60 heavyweight contributors in attendance to each share their pick of who he should tap as his running mate. At a photo line with donors in Minneapolis in August, he polled whether he should continue using a teleprompter at public events.

At a mountainside chateau in Aspen last week, he quizzed locals about how the campaign could better compete in Colorado. And in a pistachio orchard outside a supporter’s home in Tulare, Calif., this week, he queried farmers about how to create a “permit” system for undocumented workers.

The episodes illustrate how Trump, who has a tiny circle of intimates, is turning to the wealthy business leaders he encounters on the fundraising circuit to serve as an ad hoc kitchen cabinet. He appointed many of his biggest financial backers to his economic advisory council, including Wisconsin billionaire Diane Hendricks, investor Tom Barrack and oil executive Harold Hamm. And there are already signs of how Trump is incorporating ideas from donors into his campaign.