The Nonprofit Jargon Industrial Complex

The other day I read an opinion piece in the Chronicle of Philanthropy that resonated so much I wanted to jump up and kiss the author, Matt Watkins, (who I’ve never met – so he might be freaked out by that gesture).

Matt, who leads Watkins Public Affairs, wrote about the rat hole of professional gobbledygook that has infiltrated nonprofit culture. The jargon industrial complex evolved because nonprofits felt a need to convey they possessed sophisticated knowledge about the issues they were tackling. As a result, grant proposals and reports rolled off the press filled with language that is indecipherable to most humans (to be fair, some of this is the fault of how foundations have worded the prompts). I’ve also seen nonprofit websites with such obscure language that I’m sure they leave people seeking help wondering what help is available to them.

In his essay, Matt provided several examples that made me want to laugh and cry at the same time. One was, “rather than saying, ‘We advance anti-displacement strategies through equitable redevelopment,’ say ‘We help people stay in their homes as rents rise, neighborhoods change, and minimum wage remains stagnant.’” His message is simple: plain spoken is good spoken.

This language gamesmanship is not making nonprofits sound knowledgeable; its making organizations sound elitist. It is alienating us from good hearted people in our community who would support our work if they understood what the hell we were trying to do. It’s exacerbating class divides, which, if you weren’t paying attention, were a major reason the Dems lost the last presidential election. Most importantly, it is creating unnecessary barriers to many of the people nonprofits want to serve.

Sure, some of the problems that we’re attempting to solve are complex. But that doesn’t mean we can’t do our best to explain our approaches in a straightforward manner. 

Straightforward language is just that. It conveys what you want to say in ways that are accessible to all types of people. People who need your help, people who want to support your work, and people you want to lobby.      

I often tell the story about the time I attempted to read an article assigned on my first day of graduate school. The author, a political-economist at Harvard, wrote in such convoluted academese that it took me two hours to decipher three paragraphs. I was practically in tears. Two good things came out of that experience:

1) After coming home and asking “What’s for dinner?” my husband learned to cook, and

2) I learned that communicating with students, citizen activists, and scholars! using relatable language would help them learn what I wanted them to know.

Look, times are tough all around. Don’t make things more complicated. Keep it simple, and keep fighting for what matters.          

Finally, remember, NUA – never use acronyms.

😊

Pat

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Pat Libby is a change management consultant working principally with nonprofit corporations. She is author of The Empowered Citizens Guide: 10 Steps to Passing a Law that Matters to You, Oxford University Press, The Lobbying Strategy Handbook, second edition, Oxford University Press, and Cases in Nonprofit Management, SAGE. She has served as an academic, senior executive, board member, and consultant to innumerable nonprofit organizations and foundations for more than three decades.

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