Ever wondered whether you should use “nonprofit” or “non-profit”? If you’re in the U.S. or Canada, the answer is: non-profit.
With the hyphen.
I confess I’ve never liked the hyphen in there. It looks clunky. Or sloppy. Or something. So I’ve been a long-time fan of the visually tidier “nonprofit”.
Boy oh boy, was I wrong. At least if my goal was to use a term that would make it as easy as possible for people wanting to market their non-profit to find their way to us here at Claxon. (In my defense, if visual tidiness was my goal, I would’ve been totally justified in eschewing the hyphen.)
Here’s the deal: Using Google Trends, we learn that people search for “non-profit” way more than they search for “nonprofits”. Adding that little hyphen ups your search engine results which, in turn, ups your odds of someone making their way to your website.
Now, what if you’re interested in attracting folks abroad? The hyphen/no-hyphen debate isn’t even relevant. That’s because in places like the U.K., they don’t use either “nonprofit” or “non-profit”. Nope. They use “charity”.
In the U.S., the word charity has a somewhat antiquated feel. It conjures up images of Oliver Twist asking in his most adorable little boy voice if he can please, sir, have some more. Charity connotes a hand out, rather than a hand up.
Not so in the U.K. They have charities. Lots and lots of charities!
So if you’re a U.S. organization or Canadian organisation wanting to grab the attention of donors in the U.K., charity is your term of choice.
This handy dandy chart shows which terms are used most often in each geography.
| US | Canada | UK | |
| Nonprofit | 40 | 7 | 1 |
| Non-profit | 100 | 63 | 6 |
| Charity | 23 | 39 | 100 |
The graph below will reinforce that if you have a global audience, your hands-down winner is “charity”.
Post Readability Stats: Reading Ease 69.3, Grade Level 6.4