Stop Saying You Are an Organization Advancing Equitable Systems-Level Housing Interventions
- Patrick Kirby
- 4 days ago
- 5 min read
There is a special place in nonprofit purgatory for uttering the phrase “We advance housing stability through coordinated interventions.”
For the love of all that is holy, just say you housed 120 families.
When did the nonprofit sector develop a bizarre allergy to clarity?
Somehow, we’ve convinced ourselves that if we speak simply, people will assume we’re unsophisticated. That if we don’t sprinkle in words like “ecosystem,” “framework,” “equitable outcomes,” or “systems-level impact,” donors will think we don’t understand complexity - and won’t be as generous to our mission.
Meanwhile, the donor is sitting there thinking: “I just want to know what you do.”
No donor has ever considered your theory of change as a reason to give.
No supporter has ever been curious about your cross-sector collaborative synergy.
And no sponsor has ever written a large check because of your nonprofit’s longitudinal capacity-building initiative.
What.
The.
Hell.
Do.
You.
Do!?
That’s all they care about. Whether you do it well. And whether it makes them feel good to be part of the mission.
For some strange reason, nonprofits don’t seem to get that donors are not funding your vocabulary.
They’re funding impact.
And when we hide impact behind technical mumbo jumbo, we aren’t signaling expertise.
We’re just like every other word-salad elite who is really good at saying a lot of words that have no actual meaning behind them.
We tell ourselves this fancy language happened because of the need for compliance.
Grant reports require it. Foundations reward it. Boards like it. Lawyers tolerate it.
So we start writing like policy briefs instead of humans.
’Cause nothing says “donor-centric love language” quite like sexy lawyer speak.
We learn quickly that saying “We reduced evictions by 18% in District 3” feels riskier than saying “We strengthened community-based housing stabilization strategies.”
One is measurable. The other is a gross, trying-to-sound-smart, verbal-fundraise-maxxing phrase probably designed for LinkedIn likes.
Guess which one makes a donor feel something?
Oh, is it the phrase that donors understand?
Yes.
Yes it is.
The irony is awful.
We claim to exist for community. We claim to center people. And then we speak in ways that make normal, everyday people feel like they accidentally wandered into a graduate seminar on timeshares they didn’t register for.
Clarity is not dumbing down. Clarity is kindness.
When a nonprofit says “We address food insecurity,” it sounds responsible. Professional. Sanitized. Cold. Boring. And probably AI-generated.
When a nonprofit says “We make sure kids in our neighborhood don’t go to bed hungry,” people ask how they can help almost immediately.
One of those statements is technically correct. The other sounds like an actual human being.
We’ve trained ourselves to prefer the former, and it’s gross.
And when did over-produced professionalization become the identity we all strive for?
If you say “We facilitate cross-sector capacity building,” you may think you sound like you belong at the big-kid table. You might even sound fully funded and grant-ready! And you definitely sound like you’ve been to the right conferences!
But donors don’t care if you’ve mastered the dialect of Ivory Tower philanthropy.
They care if their neighbor was able to stay in their apartment.
They care if one of their kids’ classmates got tutoring and graduated.
They care if the single dad found childcare so he could keep his job.
When we default to abstract-driven narratives, we remove the actual people we claim to serve. We turn stories into categories and neighbors into “target populations.”
And then we wonder why public trust feels a tad wobbly.
When funding gets threatened or politics turn messy, the organizations that survive are the ones people can explain over a cup of coffee or a quick phone call.
“Yeah, they’re the group that keeps families from getting evicted.”
Not:
“They’re the organization advancing equitable systems-level housing interventions.”
Good luck rallying the troops with that one.
Here’s something that may be controversial.
There’s a subtle arrogance baked into nonprofit jargon.
We’ve internalized this idea that complexity has to be communicated with overly complicated language.
And that’s garbage.
The smartest people I know can explain complex issues with as few words as humanly possible. In fact, that’s how you know they understand it better than anyone else.
If you truly grasp systems change, you should be able to say: “We’re fixing the policies that make it hard for working families to stay in their homes.”
If you truly understand equity, you should be able to say: “We’re making sure kids from every neighborhood get the same shot at success.”
Plain language doesn’t diminish your sophistication. It proves your organization knows the issues better than anyone else.
But my guess is that we lean into jargon because it’s like having a verbal security blanket.
Abstract language is safer because it’s harder to argue with, measure, or challenge.
“Advancing equity” sure as hell sounds like you’re holding the moral high ground. But it doesn’t tell anyone what you actually did or what’s actually changing.
And donors just desperately want to know about the change and impact you’re making.
When someone is about to part with their hard-earned money, the least we can do is speak in a way that honors their intelligence and their time.
Imagine if every nonprofit replaced its homepage headline with this sentence structure:
“We help [who] do [what] so that [what changes].”
Oh, I’ve imagined.
And it sounds like boatloads of money for your organization.
Need a few examples? Good. I’ve got ’em.
“We help seniors stay in their homes so they don’t have to choose between medicine and rent.”
Boom. Clarity.
“We help kids learn to read so they’re ready for third grade.”
Love it. Simplicity.
“We help veterans find jobs so they can support their families.”
Who doesn’t want to help with this?
If we want the public to trust us, we have to be recognizable. If we want donors to stick with us, we have to be clear. If we want communities to rally around us, we have to sound like part of the community - not like we’re presenting a dissertation to it.
Simplicity is your fundraising best friend.
It’s saying: “Here’s what we do. Here’s what it costs. Here’s what changed.”
Simple impact.
And if that makes us sound less sophisticated to a grant reviewer somewhere?
I’ll take that trade every day of the week if it means a donor can explain our work to a friend over coffee.
For the love of God, we don’t need more polished jargon.
We need more donors, supporters, and cheerleaders who can say, clearly and confidently:
“I know what they do. And it matters.”
Now go simplify that email or newsletter and raise all the money!
You got this!
-Patrick