Giving Compass' Take:

• This Philanthropy Daily post takes aim at all the buzzwords used in philanthropy, specifically when it overlaps with venture capitalists in Silicon Valley, as the Boys and Girls Club of the Peninsula found out when they recast their programs in more complicated-sounding startup language.

• Why should grant dollars be tied to using the correct terminology? We shouldn't have to speak in abstract terms to fund good projects, so it helps to escape our own bubbles (whether in Silicon Valley or elsewhere).

• Nonprofit AF lists some irritating jargon phrases, and what you should use instead.

One of the frustrations of philanthropy is the special language many grantmakers use. If you use words like “logic models,” “metrics,” or “capacity building,” you’re using words that distance yourself from the public and make you seem important. Tony Proscio’s series of booklets on this subject, done for the Edna McConnell Clark Foundation and available from his website ought to be required reading for all grantmakers.

Proscio’s influence, however, must not be felt on the West Coast. As Alana Semuels, an Atlantic staff writer who formerly was a reporter for the Los Angeles Times, notes in this article, if you’re a nonprofit in Silicon Valley wanting to get grantmakers to listen to you, you need an advanced degree in philanthropy bafflegab.

Silicon Valley, reports Semuels, has some unusual problems with its philanthropists. Many are advocates of “effective altruism,” so they think it’s more important to put their donations to work helping thousands of people in the Third World than helping their community. More than a few drive from their homes in wealthy suburbs on an expressway to their offices and never come into contact with poor people.

So if you’re a traditional nonprofit you have to come up with new ways to get the program officers and billionaires to listen to you. Semuels gives, as a case study, the Boys and Girls Clubs of the Peninsula.

Read the full article about using plain English in philanthropy by Martin Morse Wooster at Philanthropy Daily.