Inclusivity can be an overwhelming word.  It sounds like a lot more work for your organization.  It sounds costly.  And yet it’s incredibly easy.

For non-profit legal organizations, being inclusive means just continuing that overall mission of justice for all, regardless of any barriers.  In some ways, providing the LGBTQ+ community better justice is the same thing as providing larger communities better justice.  Eviction is legally the same no matter your background, heritage, or identity.  Name changes are the same tedious process for everyone.

But on the other hand, providing better justice to the LGBTQ+ community may require a bit of a paradigm shift.

On average, it’s estimated that 4.1% of the American population openly identifies as LGBTQ+.  That’s a very small percentage. But, in 2012, 21% of LGBT adults reported yearly incomes of less than $12,000.  Another study found that lesbian couples over 65 had twice the poverty rates of heterosexual couples. These numbers indicate that a good portion of a non-profit legal organization’s clientele will be members of the LGBTQ+ community.

When a huge segment of your audience is one particular group, it makes sense to make whatever that group needs easily available.  For example, make sure that your clients know that they can’t be evicted because of their orientation, or streamline the name change process as much as you can.

But, more importantly, make sure that all your language is inclusive.  A lot of my project at my host-organization this summer, MLSA, requires me to rewrite articles on MontanaLawHelp.org in plain language.  Inclusivity probably isn’t your first thought when it comes to plain language, but it does play a role.  Even in plain language writing, biases will come out.  In this project I’ve found that I need to go back again and again to make sure that how I described a law would work for everyone, no matter their identity.  For example, I needed to relook at an article on orders of protection, because it incorrectly stated that “intimate partners” in MT only meant heterosexual couples.  I need to remind myself to use they/them as much as possible instead of he/her.  Making sure your plain language is inclusive will make your website more welcoming.  It might even give visitors the confidence to ask about something that you missed on the website, like how to get a same-sex marriage certificate.

And this is all easier than it sounds.  Focusing on certain services means that you are listening to your audience and helping them get what they need.  Changing your language to be inclusive means an extra minute looking over your work before you publish it.  Plain language is a necessary change a lot of legal websites need to make anyway.  Adding that extra minute to check for correct or inclusive information can make all the difference. And it’s easy.