There is a particular kind of language that develops inside organizations over time. It starts as shorthand—ways of describing complex concepts efficiently, because everyone in the room already knows what you mean. It gets reinforced through grant writing, where certain terms signal credibility to funders. It spreads through training materials, job descriptions, and internal communications until it becomes the default vocabulary of the organization.
And then it ends up on your website, where the people you’re trying to reach encounter it without any of that context—and sometimes without any way to know that the services described are actually for them.
This is one of the more uncomfortable conversations in nonprofit communications, because the organizations with the most jargon-heavy websites are often the ones most deeply committed to equity and access. The language signals fluency in frameworks that matter: trauma-informed care, intersectionality, harm reduction, restorative justice. It’s not accidental or careless. But fluency in sector language and accessibility for the communities you serve are often in tension, and websites are one of the places where that tension becomes most concrete.
What the research says about plain language
Health literacy research has documented this problem clearly in healthcare contexts: patients who receive information in plain language have better outcomes than those who receive the same information in clinical language. Not because the second group is less intelligent, but because they’re processing an unfamiliar vocabulary at the same time they’re trying to make a high-stakes decision, often under stress. Cognitive load is real, and adding unfamiliar language to an already taxing situation makes comprehension harder.
The same dynamic applies to community organizations. Someone trying to figure out whether they qualify for your legal services, whether your shelter can help them, or whether your health center offers the care they need is already navigating a stressful situation. They should not also have to decode what “wraparound services” means.
Specific categories to audit
Program and service names. Organizations name programs for internal reasons—a grant initiative, a founding framework, a coalition’s branding. Those names often don’t describe what the program actually does to an outside reader. “The REACH Initiative” tells a visitor nothing. “Free legal help for renters facing eviction” is immediately clear. If your program names require explanation, add that explanation prominently—or consider whether the names themselves could be made more descriptive.
Eligibility language. How you describe who you serve has a direct effect on whether the right people self-identify as your clients. “We serve low-income individuals” excludes people who don’t self-identify as low-income even when they meet your eligibility criteria. “We work with people who are struggling to pay for housing, food, or healthcare” is more likely to reach people where they are.
Identity and community language. Terms like “BIPOC,” “LGBTQIA+,” “neurodivergent,” “unhoused,” “undocumented,” and similar have genuine meaning within certain communities and are actively preferred by many people. They also function as in-group markers that may not register with everyone you’re trying to reach. This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t use them—but it’s worth thinking about where and how. “We serve LGBTQ+ youth” is fine. Using “QTBIPOC” in a service description without any plain-language context may not reach everyone it’s intended to.
Process language. “Intake,” “case management,” “care coordination,” “navigation services”—these describe your internal operations, not the experience of the person seeking help. Someone who has never interacted with a social services organization may not know what “intake” means. “Fill out a short form and we’ll contact you within 48 hours to get started” tells them what will happen in terms they already understand.
Values and framework language. “Trauma-informed,” “anti-oppressive,” “strengths-based,” “harm reduction,” “restorative”—these frameworks matter and are worth communicating. But communicating them means explaining what they look like in practice, not just naming them. “We won’t ask you to prove you deserve help” is a trauma-informed value stated in plain language. Listing “trauma-informed care” on your About page is communicating to peers, not to clients.
How to audit your own language
The fastest test: read your homepage as if you’re a person who has never heard of your organization and is looking for help with the specific problem you address. Read it as someone who doesn’t know your sector, isn’t familiar with your theoretical frameworks, and is tired and stressed. Does it tell them, within the first two sentences, whether you can help them? Does it describe what you do in words they’d use themselves?
A slower but more rigorous test: ask someone outside the sector—a family member, a neighbor, a volunteer who came through a different channel—to read your homepage and tell you what your organization does and who it serves. The gaps in their answer are the gaps in your communication.
The goal isn’t to strip out all specificity or to write for the lowest common denominator. It’s to make sure that the people who most need your services can recognize themselves in your language—and don’t need to already be fluent in the vocabulary of the nonprofit sector to understand that you exist for them.
If you’d like help thinking through your site’s language with fresh eyes, I’d be glad to take a look. Sometimes the most useful thing is just a reader who isn’t inside the organization.