How To Adopt Equitable Language In Your Year-End Fundraising Communications
In nonprofits, we rely on the support of donors and funders, and it’s our job to ensure they understand the impact of our work in the community. How do we do that? Stories.
We are constantly telling the story of the communities we serve, the outcomes of our programs, the culture of our teams, and the mission and values of our organizations. Whether it’s in a newsletter, in the data we provide in grant reports, or in a social media post, we are telling the story of how we’re creating the world we want to live in. In the fall, we’re telling our stories through our fundraising appeals.
In these stories, our language has impact, and the ways we talk about our communities can be empowering, or cause harm. As our collective understanding of equity continues to evolve, so does our storytelling, and the year-end fundraising appeal is a huge opportunity to show our donors, funders, and community how care we take of our stories.
Here are some questions we can ask ourselves when we’re writing our stories of impact during this year-end fundraising season:
Are there terms we’ve decided to stop using?
At least annually we should be auditing the language we’re using in our communications, tracking words we’re no longer using, and what we say instead. For example:
Replacing “homeless” with “unhoused” or “houseless”
Shifting from “LGBT” to “LGBTQIA2S+”
Replacing “poor” with “experiencing poverty”
Are we using person-first and strength-based language?
In person-first language, we don’t define someone’s identity by the barrier they face, instead, the systemic barrier is a noun separate from the person.
Instead of “marginalized people” we can say “people experiencing marginalization”
We can use strength-based language to say “people facing marginalization”
We can use more explicit language by saying “people facing systems of oppression such as racism, xenophobia, trans/queerphobia, misogyny, misogynoir, and ableism”
We can name specifically who we are talking about by saying “Black Oregonians facing food insecurity”
We can acknowledge intersectionality by saying “Black Oregonians navigating both food insecurity and systemic racism.”
When we are talking about a client or the community we serve, are we using active verbs?
Rather than “we provided x service to John” say “John accessed x service”
Rather than “we listened to our community” we can say “our community shared/taught us”
Did we empower someone, or did they empower themselves?
What verbs are we using to talk about the funder? Did the funder save people from experiencing food insecurity, or did the funder’s support of our programming help make it possible for Oregonians to have access to the food they need?
When we take the time to scrutinize our language and depict our community from a strength-based lens, we not only demonstrate our commitment to community care, but we also influence the language donors use to talk about our work, shifting their perspective from one of heroic charity, to a sense of community and belonging.
Year-End Fast-Track
Need help telling your year-end story? Or generally building out your year-end plan? Sign up for my Year-End Fast-Track where you’ll get 2 focused, virtual or in-person, four-hour sessions (or 3 three-hour sessions if you’re in Give! Guide), to work with me to build a fundraising plan that fits your community and your organization’s unique needs. From setting practical goals to developing smart outreach strategies, ethical storytelling to data merging, we’ll cover it all. By the end, you’ll have a clear, realistic plan, customized to your capacity and values, ready to execute.