Traction

Submitted by Lennie Magida, Senior Manager, Development & Communications, Association of Small Foundations

Tony Responds:
Traction is a word that annoys people not because it’s jargon (I’ll defend it against that charge in a minute) but because it’s overused. The idea of traction, as in “we need to renew this grant because the project is just gaining traction,” gives people in philanthropy an incomparable thrill.

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Underserved

Submitted by Fred Silverman, VP, Marketing and Communications, Marin Community Foundation

Tony Responds:
The use of “underserved” is so widespread that one might think it deserves to be condemned mainly as a cliche. But it’s actually worse than that. Even though everyone uses it (typically three times per page), hardly anyone ever pauses to think about what it means — or even what they want it to mean.

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Unpacking

Submitted by M. Emma Hixson, J.D., Executive Director Employee Relations Department, Minneapolis Public Schools

M. Emma writes:
A jargon I hear a lot is “unpacking”. Everyone wants to “unpack the teachers’ contract”. They use it to say they want to analyze or dissect what’s in the contract. ( What they really want to do is change it.)

Tony Responds:
The popularity of the peculiar verb “unpack” (as in “we need to unpack theconcept of access-to- health-care if we hope to devise better ways todeliver medical services”) is not merely a case of a new jargon juggernaut. More interestingly, it’s a case of jargon feeding on jargon.

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Vulnerable

Submitted by Fred Silverman, Vice President for Marketing and Communications, Marin Community Foundation

I have a problem with “vulnerable” (as in “vulnerable populations,” “vulnerable communities,” and “vulnerable environments”), but my problem isn’t lexical. I don’t actually think it’s a bad word, though it’s certainly been overused to the point of exhaustion. Especially in philanthropy — where one key reason for our work is to do something to benefit people in trouble, or for people who may be on the verge of trouble — it is not only useful but important to have expressions that mean “in trouble” or “on the verge of trouble.”

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