Stand Out Amongst Similar Groups –
Without Making Them Look Bad

You want to show how positively your work stands out among similar groups, but it can be hard to do that without making someone else look bad. It can seem like you have to choose between saying something negative about another, or avoiding the real truth and not getting to show something positive about your organization. Revealing this positive aspect of your organization might make all the difference in getting the clients, customers, participants, donations, or grants you are seeking. It may be absolutely necessary to describe how you compare favorably with others, so your reader knows to choose you amongst all of the options. Yet if you make someone else look bad, then instead of readers seeing your excellence in comparison, they might just see you as having a negative attitude, at best, or as downright vain, gossipy, and mean, at worst. So how do you make yourself look good without making anyone else look bad?

A Bad Example

We’ll start with an example of something you might want readers to know, expressed in a way that makes someone else look bad:

Other area nonprofits that provide similar services make their constituents wait longer than we do, which many people with low incomes cannot afford to do.

This makes the other organizations sound cold and inconsiderate of the needs of the people they are supposed to be assisting. It would likely offend people from these other nonprofits if they were to see it. It also makes the writer’s organization sound like they have a bad attitude about other nonprofits, which does not speak well for their ability to work compassionately with the people they serve or with other community nonprofits. Grant funders in particular want to see organizations collaborating with one another to better meet constituent needs, not talking negatively about one another to others.

 

So What is the Solution?

You can avoid making anyone else look bad – and actually compliment them – while still standing out in comparison to them, creating a win-win for everybody. How? By talking about your strengths as your specialty. Here is an example:

While there are many others doing excellent similar work in our area, we specialize in reducing wait time and fast-tracking people with low incomes who cannot afford to wait for help.

This explicitly states what is so great about this organization compared to others, but does not say or imply that other organizations are doing anything bad or wrong. It implies instead that different groups simply have different specialties or strengths. This is a good thing; a collection of organizations with different strengths in serving the same group of people is better equipped to serve those people’s needs than a collection of organizations that all have the same strong points would be.

It can feel like a tightrope walk to talk about what makes your organization stand out amongst similar groups without making any of those other groups look bad. This technique enables you to accomplish that without compromising, so you can not only still show readers how you shine, but make others glow too, and make yourself sparkle even more in your readers’ eyes through your compassion and support for others.