I not too long ago obtained a brand new prescription for glasses. You’ve seen these. Principally a bunch of codes and numbers. In a type of bizarre, idle moments if you take note of one thing you wouldn’t usually take a look at (you do this too, proper?) I attempted to determine it out.
I didn’t get far, however I did see one thing: One row of codes was labeled OD, and one other was OS. They stand for Ocular Dexter (proper eye) and Ocular Sinister (left eye).
It’s a secret code utilized by eye-health professionals.
Why do they use a secret code? Wouldn’t “proper eye” and “left eye” work simply as properly?
It’s exclusivity. Excluding. That’s, it’s gatekeeping.
Utilizing codes based mostly on Latin and Greek is a part of what units medical professionals aside. You’d suppose the encyclopedic information they want can be sufficient. However utilizing a lifeless language hardly anybody can learn closes the gate even tighter.
I don’t need to declare all of your docs are in on some sort of conspiracy. They only go along with what they discovered, and it really works wonderful for them, so why trouble translating stuff into the languages their sufferers communicate?
However, it’s a part of a really efficient solution to maintain the gates closed to all however just a few.
Are you utilizing secret codes in your fundraising that successfully exclude a few of your donors?
You is perhaps. Most nonprofits are related to some sort of superior occupation — like science, drugs, regulation, music — the has its personal skilled discourse. A method the folks in that occupation talk with one another that successfully retains others out.
No hurt completed, so long as the skilled discourse stays among the many professionals. (Although I did discover an article on the Nationwide Institutes of Well being titled It’s time to throw out old style Latin abbreviations. It argues for utilizing peoples’ languages, particularly in prescription.)
However if you use the code with donors, you’re preserving donors out.
The excuse generally given for utilizing skilled discourse in public is that they don’t need to “dumb down” their communications.
Which additionally means, We don’t need “dumb” donors.
That’s virtually viciously exclusionary. Elitism working wild.
When you worth individuals who received’t — or can’t — get by way of the skilled gates of your trigger, use their language.
It’s moral. And it raises more cash.
Extra posts on this sequence:
