Excerpt from Flip Your Phrases into Cash: The Grasp Fundraiser’s Information to Persuasive Writing
Everybody tells you to keep away from jargon.
That’s good recommendation, often. However not at all times in fundraising.
The correct of jargon, utilized in the fitting method, could make you extra plausible and persuasive. It will possibly join you extra intently along with your donors and assist deliver in additional income.
Jargon is nothing apart from specialised language. Folks discuss and write in jargon as a result of it’s helpful. These of us who work in junk mail throw round all types of jargon: service envelope, driver, remit (accent on the primary syllable, in fact). It’s simpler that method. We don’t need to say, “The envelope that every one the opposite stuff is in when the bundle mails.”
Professions aren’t the one teams with jargon. Religion communities and localities have them, too:
- Jap Orthodox Christians discuss rather a lot about “the Theotokos.” If you happen to’re exterior that neighborhood, that phrase might be Greek to you. If you happen to’re inside, it’s fully pure.
- There’s a park in my neighborhood that everybody calls “Large Howe.” That’s not its official identify. Solely individuals who don’t reside right here name it what the Parks Division calls it.
Jargon, like clichés, helps individuals talk. It additionally helps individuals join. Utilizing Theotokos or Large Howe with another person who is aware of the time period reveals you’re in the identical circle. We’ve one thing in frequent. And when you might have one thing in frequent, you’re in your strategy to higher fundraising.
The darkish aspect of jargon reveals when it’s utilized in a method that places your reader exterior the circle. That sort of jargon is each a barrier to understanding and a sign of exclusion. It doesn’t create a fertile floor for compassion and generosity.
Let’s have a look at a time period a lot used within the nonprofit sector: capability constructing. If you happen to’re severe about lifting individuals out of poverty, you’re in all probability into capability constructing. Good idea, nevertheless it means nothing to your donors. It has no emotional connotations. It solely tells them one factor: You’re exterior my circle.
I doubt most individuals who use capability constructing use it to close out donors. They merely don’t acknowledge it as jargon. They’re deaf to the truth that solely specialists like themselves know and use the phrase.
However it hurts anyway.
Listed below are two issues to contemplate earlier than tossing insider phrases into your fundraising:
- Will your viewers perceive the jargon? It’s straightforward to imagine that as a result of you understand it, they do too. Not essentially. Run it previous a non-expert to see whether or not it’s understood. You is perhaps stunned.
- Why are you utilizing jargon? Make certain it’s to not present donors how sensible you are, however how sensible they are.
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(This put up first appeared on October 24, 2019.)
