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I not too long ago bought a brand new prescription for glasses. You’ve seen these. Principally a bunch of codes and numbers. In a kind of bizarre, idle moments whenever you take note of one thing you wouldn’t usually have 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 could be sufficient. However utilizing a useless language hardly anybody can learn closes the gate even tighter.
I don’t wish to declare all of your docs are in on some type of conspiracy. They only go along with what they discovered, and it really works nice for them, so why hassle translating stuff into the languages their sufferers converse?
Nonetheless, it’s a part of a really efficient technique 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 may be. Most nonprofits are related to some type of superior occupation — like science, medication, regulation, music — the has its personal skilled discourse. A approach the folks in that occupation talk with one another that successfully retains others out.
No hurt finished, 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 whenever you use the code with donors, you might be retaining donors out.
The excuse generally given for utilizing skilled discourse in public is that they don’t wish to “dumb down” their communications.
Which additionally means, We don’t need “dumb” donors.
That’s virtually viciously exclusionary. Elitism operating wild.
Should you worth individuals who received’t — or can’t — get by means of the skilled gates of your trigger, use their language.
It’s moral. And it raises extra money.
Extra posts on this sequence:
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