I recently read a post on LinkedIn about “empowerment” language, and it really got me thinking! Language is a living, breathing part of our work, and it changes constantly. When I first started grant writing more than a decade ago (now closer to two decades than one!), “empowerment” language was just entering grant writing, and it was considered fairly progressive. The idea at the time was that we were moving away from the nonprofit being the one doing the work to make the change to providing support to a community so they could make the change. 

More recent critiques of empowerment language argue that it often overlooks what is already present in communities and still gives the organization disproportionate credit for the work that happens. 

There is a sentence that lives in nearly every grant proposal I have ever read, and in plenty I have written myself: "Our organization empowers [women] to [build financial independence]." Insert your variable between the brackets. It reads as warm, mission-driven. It has done its job in thousands of funded applications. I want to slow down on it, because that sentence carries an assumption about who matters most in the work.

Empowerment language has become the sector's default vocabulary. It signals values. It tells a funder you care. It also, in the same breath, places your organization at the center of the story and the community you serve at the receiving end of your generosity. That arrangement is worth examining, especially for those of us who care about equity and want our grant narratives to reflect it.