‘It’s Like YouTube’

My wife and I got our kids to watch an episode of Seinfeld last night, something we’d never done before. 

Less than five seconds into the episode, our 15-year-old with a rocket for a brain began to doubt that this was going to be worth his very important time.  “So… what IS this,” he asked.

My wife said, “It’s a SitCom.”

Blank stares from the kids.

She continued, “’SitCom’ is short for ‘situation comedy.’  It’s a type of show.”

Just complete nothing on my kids’ faces.

So I said, “It’s like a 22-minute YouTube show with recurring characters.”

“Oh!” my two older kids said.  They understood.  “Sounds great, let’s watch!”

“Oh!” my youngest kid said.  “Like YouTube!”  He understood enough to be interested.

Once they had a frame of reference they understood, they were willing to give some time to this.

Let this be a lesson to all us nonprofit people and our jargon.

If you ask donors to “provide housing for a person who is justice involved” … you’re going to get a lot of blank stares.  The only donations you’ll receive are from people who already know the jargon, so you’ll have a very hard time growing. 

On the other hand, say you give donors a frame of reference that they understand and ask them to “provide housing to a person who has turned their life around after an early arrest.”  Then you’re going to get a lot of, “Oh, sounds great.”

It’s a generous act by a nonprofit to use language and concepts that are easier for a donor to understand.  (And of course there are boundaries: I’m not suggesting using hurtful terms or language, and in my contra-example I purposefully used people-first, supportive, respectful language.) 

When we make the generous choice, we’re sacrificing a tiny bit of accuracy for increased engagement, donations, and impact.

To bring it back to my kids; I could have been the pedantic parent, made them look up “situation comedy” and given them a brief history of the TV landscape in the 90’s. 

How do you think that would have gone?

That’s not the type of parent I want to be, and it’s not the type of nonprofit our beneficiaries need us to be.