Stop “dumbing down” your fundraising

If I got a nickel every time I heard a nonprofit leader refuse to “dumb down” their fundraising, I’d have, well, a really big bag of loose change.

It’s often a point of pride for people in nonprofits to preserve the complexity of their programs in their fundraising.

The problem with that is that simplifying is not at all the same thing as dumbing down. Just dumping your knowledge out in front of people is a pretty “dumb” way to communicate. In fact, making something simpler (and still accurate) should be thought of as “smarting up.”

And in fundraising, you’ll raise less money.

Seth Godin addresses this in Dumbing it down.

Seth doesn’t want you to dumb down your message, but he hopes you’ll take the trouble to simplify it:

… if we dumb things down, they become dumb. We have enough dumb. We need more simple.

Complexity is part of life. Being good at anything is being good at understanding and managing complexity.

But communicating to people outside of your professional circle is a different thing.

Don’t trade complexity for clarity. They are not opposites.