Sherri: Welcome to Cahoots Commentary, where we share our comments about what to do and, most importantly, what not to do in your nonprofit communications. Thanks for joining me today for this commentary.  

I’m alone in the studio for this edition of commentary because I once again witnessed a major nonprofit organization using a hyphenated version of the word “nonprofit”. The topic I am addressing today is Nonprofit and Fundraising are not hyphenated words. Like It or Lump It.  

Like it or not, nonprofit is a single word, and the preferred version is not hyphenated. When “non” is used as a prefix, it is presented without a hyphen, like in nonfiction or nonbeliever. Or like in this case, nonprofit. The only time it is hyphenated is if it precedes a capitalized name like non-American, or non-Catholic.  

The other word we see incorrectly hyphenated is fundraising, where sometimes we see it presented as two words “fund “and “raising”. Fundraising is one word as well, and it has been since 1869 when the Oxford English Dictionary made it official.  

So you may not like it, but what I want to caution you is that you don’t want to lump it. Here’s why. I know for a professional fact that there are foundations and funders that will disregard or be less likely to fund an organization or a ministry that has presented them with a grant proposal with “nonprofit” hyphenated.  

Now, that may sound absolutely ridiculous, but it’s one of those quick ways for these funders to eliminate organizations that simply aren’t grammatically correct or, frankly, don’t care to be.  

And it’s such an easy switch. The simple use of the Find and Replace in Word or Google Docs takes moments and could mean you aren’t eliminated from potential funding. It’s going to take a bit more work to remove it from your website, but a word search can be conducted page by page to make sure that you catch all of them. And this is something you can begin doing today for no cost, but for really good outcomes.  

But I do have one last additional comment and word of counsel: make sure you share this information with all your coworkers. Because right now, while you’re listening to this cahoots commentary, someone on your team is hitting the hyphen key on their keyboard because “they don’t know they don’t know”.  

We highly recommend that you officially place this hyphenation copy standard issue in your Brand Standards Guide, so folks will see it going forward if they’re new on staff.  

And so that’s my commentary on Nonprofit and Fundraising are not hyphenated words. Like It or Lump It. Thanks for listening. And if you’d like to learn more about setting copy and content standards for your organization, ministry, or maybe you’re a church, we have a training course for that. Check it out on our website at CahootsCommunications.com.