Episode 235: The Bamboo Rules with Fundraising: How to Understand the Long Term Investment for Success
Great fundraising, like the growth of bamboo, begins with unseen groundwork. The first five years may show nothing above the surface, but beneath lies a strong, intentional root system—just like the quiet outreach, relationship-building, and resilience fundraisers must invest before major gifts emerge. Today’s donor landscape demands more patience, personalization, and persistence than ever. When we stop chasing instant metrics and start cultivating trust, consistency, and collaboration, we prepare for the kind of exponential growth that surprises everyone—except the one who’s been doing the root work all along.
Welcome to another edition of Around with Randall, your weekly podcast for making your nonprofit more effective for your community. And here is your host, the CEO and founder of Hallett Philanthropy, Randall Hallett.
I'm so honored that you take a few minutes of your time to join me. Randall, on this edition of A round with Randall. I'm seeing this more constantly amongst the clients that I'm privileged to work with all around the world. And it's the idea of this conflict between what we have traditionally thought of in terms of metrics and outcomes, and also what's actually happening when we talk about donors and things.
We've discussed many times the reduction of total number of donors gifts are getting larger, which makes them more complicated. And there's this conflict of these moments or issues that are coming together. And then I had someone talk to me a little bit about the thought process of bamboo. And you may be asking, oh my goodness, where's Randall going today?
What I realized was, is that the metaphor of the actuality of how bamboo grows is something that we can integrate into what we need to be thinking about from a major gift perspective. So principal planned major gifts, and you were giving even into some of our events. How do we look at what we do? And to start, we have to understand how bamboo grows.
Now I'm in the Midwest. In Nebraska. You want to talk about corn? I've got a little bit of knowledge. Soybeans got a little knowledge. I don't know anything about bamboo. We don't got a lot of it here. But somebody explained to me and I didn't actually believe it, so I went online and actually, because I'm a nerd, googled it to find out that what they were telling me was true.
When bamboo is planted in seeds in the ground, it may take up to five years for it to surface, which is very much unlike what my wife does in our garden where she plants vegetables and things of that nature. It's certainly there's a delay, but it's in the season. It's a couple weeks, maybe a month, and then there starts to be little shoots.
We've got it all fenced off so the rabbits can't get in there. Bamboo doesn't operate that way. Bamboo will sit under the ground and develop an immense, immense root system. Unlike with any plant, the taller and bigger the plant, the bigger the root system. But most of the time, the root system and the growth of the plant, the tree, whatever kind of grow together, the bigger the upper part.
The think about an iceberg above the water.
The more there is under the water well, much like an iceberg, bamboo grows tremendously under the ground. Five years and not a chute. But the surprising thing is, is that somewhere in that process of five years, or at the end of it, it starts to grow, and then it can grow 90ft in a few weeks. And the other thing that you have to know about bamboo is, is that once it's fully grown, it's incredibly strong.
So in such a short amount of time, from what we visualize, bamboo grows immensely. But there was an underground five year process around that of infrastructure, of building out its network of roots to to feed the this particular plant. And when I heard this and then I thought about this conflict, I thought maybe there's a connection here I hadn't thought about today.
We want to use this anecdote or this example metaphor or whatever you want to call it, and really introduce what I would think of as the bamboo rule, what we really need to do to get to the right gifts. Considering fewer people are giving, less people are making a bigger difference. Bigger gifts are more complicated. It takes longer, but they're more worth the time.
And the relevance for all of us is, is that so much of the work that needs to go in to building relationships is hidden. We don't see it. And what we want to try to do today is dissect a little bit. What are some of those things that we should be not only thinking about philosophically, but tactically doing to better deepen opportunity.
So today, instead of the tactical being right at the end or not right at the end, but at the end part of it, we're going to merge the philosophical with the tactical, and I'll try to identify what I think is each because the tactical, the things you can walk away with and say, I can do that today, we could do that today.
We can implement that. That's really what I want this podcast, my 21st century classroom to be. What is it we're talking about today? You can execute into it. So the first thing is what we think of as the footwork, the idea of what happens before we actually see anything. And what we've come to understand is, is that we want instant gratification.
Our metrics are built for that. We'll talk more about that in a few minutes around gifts today and dollars and things of that nature. What we have to begin to really embrace is this idea of a normalization of the invisible effort that goes in behind the scenes. The first thing is, is we got to do a better job of explaining what we do to those who aren't a part of the philanthropic world, but they are part of the nonprofit world.
Who am I speaking up? Well, I'm talking about boards. I'm talking about executives who see what we do sometimes, like a spigot. Just turn it on, squirt some money. Sure. If you want a dollar and a half, I can do that. But if we want to actually maximize philanthropy, we know that it takes time. The bamboo kind of grass roots system got to build the relationship.
The problem is, is we don't talk about it enough. We don't force the conversation amongst those that don't know it. Now, I wrote my book a little under a year and a half ago. Very, very well-received. I'm honored. Kind of embarrassed, to be quite honest. But the the idea of a vibrant vulnerability about mastering philanthropy in the C-suite or the executive team in the administration, I wrote it from the perspective of what we want from them, what they need to know.
And part of that book is it takes time. Donors have opinions. We've got to build relationships. The root work, like the bamboo, is this early stage thing that we do that no one ever sees. So it's the infrastructure and the database that we build to track all of this. But for gift officers, it's actually more profound. I am increasing the number that I use to indicate how and why we have to do more outreach to either prospects or donors.
I used to say 3 to 5. I'm kind of moving into if you're not calling. Notice I said the word calling someone that you don't have a really great relationship with. They're a donor, a prospect, but you don't know them as well as you should. It's five calls with supporting email and texts. The reaching out to prospects. That's part of the root system.
Nobody sees that but us. And frankly, if you're a gift officer with the metric system and supervisors and mentors and bosses leadership, they don't even see it because they're depending on you to have a fire in your belly. One of those things I talk about of who we should be looking for as gift officers around the concept of you got to get your job done, got a sense of resiliency, you got to be calling constantly.
But I would go further than that. The root system or things that aren't seen are doing maybe tactics now philosophical in the tactical about writing handwritten notes, maybe even to people you don't know. I called, I left a voicemail. I'm sorry I missed you. I'd love a chance to chat. Thank you for your donations. If there are donor.
Find out more about what you're interested in. In our organization. We've become so technology driven, and most of it's good. But there's personal aspects. I received recently a personal note from a friend who I've been kind of shepherding through some things in her professional life that she's trying to figure out. She's a top notch man. She's she's the future.
And my wife commented, there is a hand written envelope downstairs on my desk, and I opened it. It was for me. It was a handwritten note. All it said was, thank you for what you're doing, talking with me, and I'm not doing that much. Asked A.
Am I going to do something the next time she needs something? Handwritten notes and then logging all of these things so that you can begin to see the progression. You might increase your weekly contact or outreach goals, the tactics. And sometimes maybe it includes doing things like sending information that isn't a solicitation or solicitation based, it's just informational.
We talked about this. I thought this was interesting. You know, in my family, we love college athletics. Always have. It's kind of a passion. And I mean it from the perspective of the larger conversation, not just football. And you know who's winning the championship, but how the business works, in part, I think, because we were always fascinated by it both.
And this is Multi-generation going back into my great grandparents, but that was going to be my career choice early on in my professional life was to become an athletic director. I'm very thankful I'm not, because the nature of athletics is changing constantly, and I'm always sending my mom and my sisters. And before my dad passed, it was really something.
We did a lot together. Just stories like, hey, did you see this? Let's think about how this might pertain to this. Well, I do that because I love it and I love them, and I love the conversations. But that's how you build deeper relationships. I'm not asking them for anything. Maybe their opinion. What do you think? How do you use some of these things in that football?
The five years it takes to get to just start shooting things up in terms of bamboo, to actually build that relationship, either starting point or enhancing it. So number one, that root ball, what do we do behind the scenes that no one ever sees? Number two is kind of what I think of. And I'll break it down into 45 and 90 day disciplines where we don't dig up the seeds.
So if you've planted bamboo and you know it's over there and there's nothing happening, you may say, like my wife does, when something doesn't grow, she tries to grow. You know, perennial flowers. And after a while there's a limit. I think about tulips because she loves them so much early on in the spring. And it's not the first year, but after about 4 or 5 years, you dig up the bulbs because nothing grew.
If nothing grew. Well, in some ways that works for tulips, but that may not work for bamboo because it takes five years. If you dig it up after two years, you've destroyed any of the opportunity for growth. And this gets us into the connection about don't digging up the seeds and really emphasizing the time and consistency and the realistic expectations that we need to have.
Going back to this conflict.
Old school metrics dollars raised versus wait. This takes more time than we we really want it to be from a pure financial perspective. I'm working with a client right now who has this consternation, and they've asked me to kind of assess one of their programs to figure this out at a very deep level. And this is a high level place.
They're gift officers are raising every one of them 2.5 to $10 million a year. I mean, it's beyond legit. But the problem is, is that their entry level prospects like industry wide prospects, major gifts may only be 10 to 25 to maybe 50,001st time donors. Well, if you have a goal of $5 million, your natural inclination is, well, I don't want to ask for or take a lot of $10,000 gifts.
I got to be working only with the people who can make 500 and million dollars gifts. Well, what this does is create this conflict, this consternation internally about pipeline. We can't grow the pipeline because our gift officers are incentivized to do something else, which goes back to digging up the seeds and just giving up on them, which is my 4590 day rule.
45 days is about pipeline development. Is are you doing the things within the 45 days for new prospects to get you access to them, which kind of ties into the first commentary around what happens in the root ball behind the scenes. Are you making those phone calls and doing so in 45 days? Are you sending personal handwritten notes?
Are you following up with email and text messages? Are you taking 45 to 60 days? I like 45 because it's less than two months. And in health care, that may mean a little bit more in education. You can expand it out if you want it, or in social service.
What we realize is what I've realized is we have a lot of gift. Officers say, well, I made two calls in an email and they didn't respond. That's not discipline. That's not keeping the seeds in the ground and keep watering them and letting the dirt and the earth nurture them. It's not consistency. And that means that we have to think about how and how many times, and the engagement we want with prospects.
90 day is my rule of thumb for cultivation and for reengaging. Just because someone gave you a $25,000 gift last year doesn't mean one phone call or one email will get you the next meeting, maybe to see if there's a chance to requalify steward and elevate them into higher levels. There's a 90 day window, and it's still. Are you reaching out?
Are you touching base? Are you doing all the things in that root ball, establishing a sense of hopefully rapport that isn't verbalized yet? You're building credibility. You're interested in them. They have a sense of, hey, they really care what I think or they care about me, or they're sending me stuff. Think about the lack of stewardship and the transactional nature that we allow, because we are so driven by the instantaneous.
Most relationships, both in prospect and in donor, are non-linear. We teach, I teach, go back and look at the episodes 28 through 31 or 32, whatever that might be around the moose management process. I think in the episodes maybe 175 through 180 are the key questions in the moose management, each one of the stages. We teach it linearly because that's kind of the way that you want to explain it.
But at the end of the day, that's not how it works. There's no linear nature to this. It's up and down, which means we have to control the pitfalls that are internal, that we have to create an understanding and build trust with our leadership, that this non-linear experience of donors may cause a increased gift, but it may not be today, and that we have a temptation we have to overcome.
Now we're into the tactics of not allowing a prospect's one know to stop us, because most of the time a no may not actually be a no, but a not now or not because of this. And we don't get into it. I have another client that we're I'm working with and is in the I think you're five of multi-level conversations about significant a significant gift.
This is a donor who's done six figure gifts. They're trying to figure out how to get to eight figure because there's plenty of opportunity. They very dialed in the community. Donors aren't it makes sense. There's a lot of connection. If they just took the $100,000 gift and said thank you and moved on and didn't keep going back, which is what we've been working on for years, I believe they're closing in on a major eight figure gift that I think will surprise some people, but it's because they haven't allowed the well, no, I don't want to give you 4 million for that, but here's on a thousand for the year.
I don't want to give you 8 million for that. Here's hundred thousand for the year. They haven't let those know change who they are and what they're trying to do. And they've created techniques. We've developed techniques to keep moving information to them. Now, in part, the head of philanthropy and this particular organization is one of the best that I've ever worked with.
She is amazing at continuing legitimate. So because it's in her heart and her soul of who she is, relationships constantly. So these techniques need reinforcement. And so the idea of delayed gratification did an episode on that at go look at episode 172 that we need to realize that the elongation of this conversation and not being up to speed is important, that we need to track these things within the CRM in the right way, and that progress like the root ball, not digging up the seats because you haven't seen anything in the first year or two, if we think about bamboo again, isn't visible until maybe suddenly it is.
And our responsibility is to continue the communication conversation until they're ready to pop through the soil. Don't dig up the seeds. Don't give up. The third is the idea of growing a forest. I didn't know this about bamboo, but bamboo doesn't usually grow one stalk or one reed at a time. It grows in immense forests, and if the root systems are all about the same or they're regenerating, what ends up happening is, is it becomes a very thick forest very quickly.
It encourages us, if we use this metaphor of understanding bamboo to be proactive not only in the gift, the bamboo, but in how we allow that bamboo to grow into multiple bulbs, into multiple shoots, which is all about our referral system. Too often I'm working with people and the infrastructure pieces. We'll just we'll just call lots of people, maybe even current or excuse me, past donors.
I've got another client I'm working with that they're trying to build their pipeline, and we're kind of working through some challenges. And what I'm hearing more often than not is, well, we've got an amazing prospect research team, and they've got a legitimate large scale team, but we're getting the gift. Officers are getting people who make gifts in 2000, but they all screen well.
Well, I'm not arguing that we shouldn't be cultivating and stewarding or stewarding and qualifying our current donors, but the word is current. That ain't current. So bamboo stocks not standing alone. Our forest is our network and we need referrals. Board members, physicians, community leaders, volunteers, faculty. We need to constantly be treating them, as we've talked about many times and others have, as well as major donors.
We need to track these things. Are we getting the right number to build that forest? Are we asking questions like, who else should hear our story? Board members? Who? What are their responsibilities for them as a part of their job description? Another client that I'm working with about helping their board figure out how they own the referral process, at least be part of it in education, it's around elevating alums and others who are long term donors, faculty members who will remember someone in health care.
It's about physicians and nurses and MP's and MPs and others because we know grateful patients. Are we building rapport with these groups of people and spending time with them, giving them easy ways to refer, giving them information about what we do, educating them what we do. One of the great things that I love to do is I teach faculty.
I'm working with a bunch of, a couple of archdiocesan priests about it. Are you actually listening to what people are saying? Are you actually understanding the referral process, that you may not actually be the one to ask and really educate me about what we do? We just don't walk out and shake people and up their wallets. Voila!
We actually build a relationship. That's the idea of growing the forest is critically important. The last is what I would call the bamboo group. That what we know is, is this bamboo grows in the forest. It grows together, grows aligned with other bamboo shoots and root balls. And in the same way, we need our offices to be supportive.
We need to do more things that are collaborative. That's why metrics are should be posted or discussed openly or shared in meetings. We're not hiding any of this, and it's the idea that this bamboo group, you find peer groups that will agree and work together and provide encouragement and excitement around the process of, we're going to do this the right way, and you will see in episode 186, I talk about collaboration both internally and externally, and we need to celebrate small wins because bamboo, all the work's being done under the ground.
We can't see it. It's small growth that continues to grow. Small victories episode 200, where I celebrated the 200th episode of around with Randall. How do we celebrate the small wins? Doing so in a group with a collaborative nature cohort will increase your likelihood that others, you, the team, the organization will do the right things in looking at it, a long gated process like bamboo that shoots up very quickly, like you've been cultivating someone.
All of a sudden, here comes $100,000 gift in a campaign. You're like, what happened? Well, somebody stay in touch with them. Somebody was doing something. That's what we need to concentrate on. And so kind of for my final tactical thinking about the bamboo rules for fundraisers and for nonprofits is you have to do what it takes before you see the results.
The root ball, working with finance, having executives understand boards, understand making sure that you're making things more personalized whenever possible, even if they're not a donor. Yet being consistent with those five plus outreaches over five for, 45 or 90 days to really focus on giving them an opportunity to respond, you have to pace. You have to be patient that relationships and donors and gifts at the highest levels don't happen right away.
It's that five year waiting period. And so those outreaches and revisiting your stewardship and making sure you're doing the right things, it takes time to develop that root ball. So you see that huge growth that comes from bamboo that may be 90ft in a few weeks. It's that one gift that comes in. You're like, well, somebody was doing something.
Grow your network, that referral base. How do you make them and track referrals where they come from? Explain why they're important. Show them data. Invite key connectors into conversations that they may not normally be aware of or know of because you want them to know better about what you're doing. Maybe set a goal. I want three great referral conversations per month.
They may not even get anything like the bamboo to start with, but they build trust in that rapport. Great! Your group as a bamboo do things together so that it becomes a monthly objective to build the infrastructure, the the routines, the communications that are important. And lastly, remember that success. Maybe you want to reframe. It isn't about gifts, it's about growth.
That's what the story of the bamboo is all about. Yeah, the 90ft in a few weeks is great, but the stories about the five years before that and all the things that the bamboo had to do to create that root system before there was growth, celebrate meetings that are being booked, new referrals that are coming in. Those touchpoints just not totals of gifts.
It's a slow burn in this process. And in doing so, what you'll find is that if we slow down and do the right things and build relationships and do the things behind the scenes that no one sees, we will encourage more opportunity for conversation around deeper meanings of philanthropy. That's our goal. And if you do that, you'll have greater success.
Learn from the bamboo thought. It was a fascinating way, at least for me. Maybe. Hopefully explain it. Okay. For you to better understand what we're trying to accomplish, don't forget to check out the blogs at House. It's three, two, or three per week. Write about a lot of things like, you know, 4 or 5, 6 weeks ago. But Mother's Day to Leadership issues, to things I read in the Chronicle of Philanthropy or Chronicle via and or nonprofit times or things that we're like, you should know this just as kind of a background 92nd read.
And if you'd like to reach out to me, it's podcast and how it's become nonprofit work is this middle ground, this kind of hole between free enterprise because the things that nonprofits do, it's not profitable. So we free enterprises won't do it, and government is not the most efficient. We fill that hole. We are the gap. What you do is important.
What you do makes a difference. Which brings me to my all time favorite saying. Some people make things happen. Some people watch things happen. Then there are those who wonder what happened. We live in a time where we need more people to be individuals. Groups who make things happen for the people in the parts of our community that are wondering what happened.
And if you're showing up every day with a little fire in your belly, a little resiliency, you can communicate. You're someone who's making things happen. For those that are truly wondering what in the world just happened, I look forward to seeing you the next time, right back here on the next edition of Around with Randall.
Don't forget. Make it a great day.