{"id":2275,"date":"2013-07-01T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2013-07-01T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.causevox.com\/?p=2275"},"modified":"2024-05-08T17:47:32","modified_gmt":"2024-05-08T17:47:32","slug":"real-talk-jargon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.causevox.com\/blog\/real-talk-jargon\/","title":{"rendered":"Be Real and Cut the Jargon"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-2291\" title=\"cut-the-jargon\" src=\"https:\/\/causevox.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/cut-the-jargon.jpg\" alt=\"cut-the-jargon\" width=\"560\" height=\"140\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Are you hoping your \u201cdonor-centric\u201d approach will create a \u201ctargeted impact\u201d for \u201call stakeholders?\u201d\u00a0 If so, you may be in the grips of jargon-itis.<\/p>\n<p>Here are common symptoms:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>A large number of words are spoken, but nothing of value is said.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>A speaker\u2019s main purpose when speaking is to hide the fact that he\/she has absolutely nothing to say.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>A speaker doesn\u2019t feel authorized to say anything real or specific outside the confines of his\/her own basement.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Listeners, although human-seeming, cannot be distinguished from plant life due to their utter disengagement and motionlessness.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Words of less than 10 letters seem to have been outlawed.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Fresh-faced interns are losing their moxie at frightening speeds.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>If these sound familiar, your organization is in trouble.<\/p>\n<p>Now, we realize that some areas of nonprofit work use specialized terms.\u00a0 That\u2019s fine.\u00a0 But meaningless corporate jargon should always be kept to a minimum.\u00a0 It wastes time, obscures the point, alienates listeners, and probably contributes to global warming, somehow.<\/p>\n<p>We came to the nonprofit world to <em>more<\/em> human, not less.\u00a0 If we wanted to use corporate buzzwords all day, we would have stayed at Business, Inc., slaving away to meet earnings goals and push the chairman\u2019s stock price up another half-tick.<\/p>\n<p>But we didn\u2019t.\u00a0 So let\u2019s simply walk the walk, and leave talking the talk to the corporate folks.<\/p>\n<p>How can you change?\u00a0 Here are a few phrase substitutions that will get you in the right frame of mind:<\/p>\n<table border=\"1\" cellspacing=\"0\" cellpadding=\"0\">\n<tbody>\n<tr>\n<td valign=\"top\" width=\"156\"><em>\u201cBased on some feedback we\u2019ve received, we need to adopt a donor-centric approach going forward.\u201d<\/em><\/td>\n<td valign=\"top\" width=\"132\">\n<p align=\"center\"><strong>=&gt;\u00a0 BECOMES\u00a0 =&gt;<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/td>\n<td valign=\"top\" width=\"156\"><em>\u201cWe have been sued by several supporters who got a piece of mail each day during our last campaign.\u00a0 We need to stop harassing people before things get violent. \u201c<\/em><em>\u00a0<\/em><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td valign=\"top\" width=\"156\"><em>\u201cSelf-sufficiency is probably the key to solving some of these fiscal challenges.\u201d<\/em><\/td>\n<td valign=\"top\" width=\"132\">\n<p align=\"center\"><strong>=&gt;\u00a0 BECOMES\u00a0 =&gt;<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/td>\n<td valign=\"top\" width=\"156\"><em>\u201cDoes anyone have any ideas about how we can make money without having to beg for every single dollar in our budget?\u201d<\/em><em>\u00a0<\/em><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td valign=\"top\" width=\"156\"><em>\u201cI\u2019m thinking that capacity-building limitations are the problem we\u2019re running into.\u201d <\/em><\/td>\n<td valign=\"top\" width=\"132\">\n<p align=\"center\"><strong>=&gt;\u00a0 BECOMES\u00a0 =&gt;<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/td>\n<td valign=\"top\" width=\"156\"><em>\u201cIf we want to become a major animal welfare group, we have to benefit more animals than just the founder\u2019s cat.\u201d<\/em><em>\u00a0<\/em><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<p>Keep it real, and you\u2019ll be on the fast track to realigning your internal communications strategy to a more listener-friendly paradigm going forward.<\/p>\n<p>Oh, wait.\u00a0 We mean:<\/p>\n<p>Keep it real, and people in your organization and community will start listening to each other instead of tuning each other out.<\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s better.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Are you hoping your \u201cdonor-centric\u201d approach will create a \u201ctargeted impact\u201d for \u201call stakeholders?\u201d\u00a0 If so, you may be in the grips of jargon-itis. Here are common symptoms: A large number of words are spoken, but nothing of value is said. A speaker\u2019s main purpose when speaking is to hide the fact that he\/she has [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":36,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2275","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article"],"acf":[],"featured_image_src":null,"featured_image_src_square":null,"author_info":{"display_name":"Olivia Hosey","author_link":"https:\/\/www.causevox.com\/author\/ohosey\/"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.causevox.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2275","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.causevox.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.causevox.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.causevox.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/36"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.causevox.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2275"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.causevox.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2275\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.causevox.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2275"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.causevox.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2275"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.causevox.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2275"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}