Words matter. What are you saying with yours?

It’s that time of year when many of us are making resolutions for the new year, usually about lifestyle, exercise and weight. But what about resolutions for the new calendar year of work?

Hot on the top of our list this holiday is the use of language. We’ve shown that individual words matter and matter hugely in the response to our fundraising and how we leave donors feeling when we thank them for their gifts.

But what about the language we use as a profession? Much of the vocabulary that fundraisers use has been around since the late 19th Century and the mass market “campaigns” that emerged at that time for organizations like the YMCA. The process of raising money for good causes was regimented and organized like a military campaign. Resources were marshalled and deployed, donors were profiled and individuals targeted. Even the word acquisition refers to what then happens to those targets.

For sure some of this vocabulary has been softened over the years, but why is it that we still use military metaphors in what should be the domain of human love and kindness? What is the logic of that “fit”?

Of course, there are other sets of vocabulary that we might use. How many of us, for example, have high value donors, major donors or low value donors and mid level donors? These are words we tend to keep to ourselves, since many donors would likely be less than enamoured by some of these labels, although I can recall receiving a thank-you from a “Head of Mid Level Giving” in an organization that shall remain nameless. If we aren’t proud to use these terms externally, why do we use them internally, creating the notion that some donors are just better than others. Could we not find terminology that would celebrate everyone?

But wait, haven’t we already begun to switch to the language of relationships? Don’t we already have acquaintances, friends and best friends, for example? Direct response fundraisers will already be familiar with the concept of planning for honeymoon periods, early in the relationship, so perhaps this relationship lexicon makes sense?

Well to a point. Our own research shows that people often don’t want relationships. Some folks just require a decent quality of service and to know that their gift achieved what was promised. Oftentimes, and especially in the context of emergencies the charity is merely a conduit for the love we offer to strangers.

The notion of relationship as currently conceptualized is also problematic because it talks in terms of what people mean to us, not what we mean to them. And it also creates a division between the two. So we’re here and the donor (our friend) is somewhere over there. There is no intimacy and no understanding that identities can fuse. If people begin to see who they are through their support of the organization the notion of friendship becomes a nonsense, because friendship is something we experience with another, not with ourselves.

So what exactly are we proposing? We believe it is time to lay waste to the military metaphors (pun intended) and to be more thoughtful of the vocabulary that we use as a profession. It does matter. If we routinely use the same word or phrase every day, eventually we accept and begin to view the world in that way. Supporters who are “acquired” are eventually treated very differently from those we share intimacy with. Words do have that kind of power.

What we need is a vocabulary that allows organizations to capture that intimacy and the words we use may not be generic. They may be specific to the focal context. Imagine having “one-heart” donors or “full-heart” donors for example. Vocabulary that celebrates the best of everyone – not in comparison with others. And vocabulary that articulates “oneness” and the degree to which that has been experienced or obtained.

To be sure, some of these words might look odd on a first read, but the reason for that is that we have become acclimated to military, value and relationship analogies that we borrowed from other domains. It is long past time we developed OUR OWN words and words that truly resonate with the love at the core of philanthropy.