We all have a fragment of foundation and NGO jargon that jumps out to us for its misuse, fractured grammar, or overuse. For years mine was ‘convening’ when used as a noun, as in “let’s plan a convening.” But that is a rant for another day. The one that catches me these days is “empowers.”  It seems so frequent that I see statements that begin:

  • “Our funding empowers rural women to ___.”
  • “Our program empowers communities to be ___.”
  • “Our grants empower indigenous people to ___.”

These are all variations, to my eye, upon “our benevolent actions allow less powerful people to do something.” The definitions of empower in the Oxford English Dictionary center upon conferring power or authority or giving a person more control over their circumstances. Is that what philanthropy means or does?

A charitable effort or foundation program rarely confers new civil rights or genuinely new authority. It is more common that a program supports individuals to access education, self-organize, improve livelihoods, and raise self-esteem. Is empowerment something we confer, or is it an inside job of self-actualization within the context of newly accessible conditions? Can people be empowered on a short timescale?  Can the privileged empower others if they do not dismantle the structures within the systems that powered the privilege and inequity?

Words are potent, and they shape nonprofit and foundation program design. Some years ago, I learned from a United Nations Environment Program report to shift from a mindset of “capacity-building” in favor of “capacity development,” defined as supporting others to continuously enhance their own capacity. The result of that shift was powerful. Capacity-building can look like parachuting into a community with short-term, external expertise to implement training, immediately assess taught skills and attendance, distribute certificates, and then depart. When capacity development fosters an indigenous capacity to continuously access expertise and skills, you get vastly different program designs emphasizing local ownership and experiential learning. Capacity development is assessed by its long-term outcomes and not post-workshop surveys. One possible result of capacity development is self-empowerment, a self-created state of accessing rights and pursuing opportunities rather than passive receipt. Capacity development occurs at an intersection of access to resources, skills, and enabling circumstances.

It is worth considering how statements that aspire to “empower others” are a projection of the priorities of who is “in power.” Supporting self-empowerment may mean removing the barriers so that people can rightfully access whatever they seek in their lives or work. When we do aim that charitable actions support people to “empower themselves,” we’ll notice different questions and support better, long-term solutions. 

“Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.”

George Orwell, Politics and the English Language (1946)

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