March 26, 2009 | Read Time: 1 minute
There is a saying in Central America: “If you impact a man you have transformed an individual. If you impact a woman, you have transformed generations to come.”
Jeff Brooks writes at his Donor Power Blog that he recently received an e-mail message from a “small, well-run nonprofit” with this “saying” as an opener. And Mr. Brooks, creative director at Merkle Direct, a fund-raising consulting firm, isn’t buying it.
“C’mon! Does anybody in Central America (or anywhere else) walk around uttering anything as clunky as that?” he writes. “What on earth would cause you to claim that they do?”
He suspects that the “saying” was probably born of bad translation mixed with “nonprofit-speak” and “bureaucratese” so that what might be a local adage becomes “a mouthful of jargon.”
“Real sayings as uttered by real people are short, easy to remember, and punchy” he writes. “When you write something, you have to do a ‘gut check.’ Does that sound real? Because when it doesn’t, you’ve all but put a big sign around your neck that says FAKE.”
And fake messages, Mr. Brooks concludes, get ignored.
What do you think? Is Mr. Brooks being too persnickety here, or has he sniffed out some “nonprofit-speak?” Do you “gut check” your marketing materials for authenticity?
