Writing a Kick-a$$ Needs Statement

Hey, everyone, I'm Sarah Lange, and I'm here to spark the Philanthropy Revolution. The word philanthropy means love of mankind. My show is all about the ways we can revolutionize our fundraising so we can raise more money and do more good.

Hey, everybody, and welcome to the Philanthropy Revolution. My name is Sarah Lange. And for those of you who don't know me, and we're meeting for the first time, welcome. I am a professional fundraiser, but more importantly, I am an industry disruptor. I have a slightly different approach to philanthropy, which is that there are many more things than just fundraising that are going to need, either increase their revenue you’re bringing in or decreasing it, we can talk about that in another time. What’s different about my approach is I take a 360 look at your organization across five areas and that’s individual giving, grants, how your board of directors is doing vis-à-vis their role as fundraisers, which in many organizations is a bone of contention, or at least, you know, that's a whole other episode. Then also strategic positioning and planning and social media and communication. So I believe that all five of those areas can contribute to or take down your fundraising.

So that's a little bit about me. And today, I want to talk about needs statements. And that might seem like a little bit of a snooze fest, but your needs assessment can either make or break your proposal, which is why I am talking about it, because it's important. So these days, the industry rejection rate when it comes to grants is about 80%. Yes, 80%. So your needs statement is actually kind of the cornerstone of your proposal because you're talking about why you need this money and why it's important. So like I said, it could be the make or break component of your grant application. And it can make the difference between a check or a rejection letter. Sometimes the needs statement is called a case statement or a description of need. Why is there so much emphasis on this one single component of your application? Because the competition is fierce and the needs statement can help the members of the distribution committee decide where to invest grant money and how much to invest. Because you might imagine, The more urgent the need, the more likely you are to get the money. So I have sat on numerous distribution committees, and we always get more asks than we could ever fund. So then we have to start figuring out how we're going to distribute the pot of money that we've been given. And we will often look at what is the need, what is the scope of the need, how urgent is the need. So again, it's an important part of your proposal. So the challenges that a lot of the problems that we're trying to fix in our nonprofits are usually unwieldy and complicated. So members of the distribution committee are often just regular folk who may or may not know anything about your organization, its mission, the issues, or the constituents you serve.

So that means it's your job to spell it out for them, don't ever leave anybody else in the job with connecting the dots, that is your job. So the needs statement breaks down the problem affecting our clients in a bite-size pieces so the funder can digest them. In all cases, you are expected to be the expert. And the  need statement is where you can demonstrate your knowledge and expertise about the critical or urgent conditions affecting the people you serve. And since the needs statement is so critical to the grant writing success process, today I'm going to answer a range of questions about needs statements. So first and foremost, how long should it be? Well, if you're writing a 10-page proposal, which has pretty much gone the way of the dinosaurs, the needs statement can be up to three pages in length. In a five-page proposal, it should be one to one and a half pages in length. So you can see where it's a pretty substantial chunk of what you're going to talk about. What should it include?

Well, the first thing is the nature of the need. What are the conditions, the forces, or the circumstances that have created this situation? Then you're going to want to talk about who. Who are the people affected? How many are affected?, and what segment of a populations is affected? So you do wanna provide some demographic here. Now, what I’m gonna say is if you have one of those programs that serves fewer people because the intervention is more intense, then you need to spell that out for them. So, for example, I often use the example of my cousin Beth, who has Down syndrome and needed to go to a special school. Well, you better believe that their staff-student ratio was very different from a public school. And yet, my cousin came out of school knowing how to show up at a job. So she learned the habits of paid work. She learned how to pay bills and keep a checking account balance. She learned kind of daily living activities like cooking and cleaning. So that might not be in your average school curriculum, but they were trying to prepare their students for adulthood, which is a very different approach than most high schools. And because all of the kids had developmental disabilities, they had a lot more staff to students. Because obviously, people like my cousin need help from multiple people. So if you're serving fewer people, you have to kind of justify that because you don't want the funder to make a decision based just on the numbers served. So make sure you spell it out for them.

Then you want to create an atmosphere around the scope of the problem. So how many people are being affected? How does this compare to similar populations in other areas or to larger geographic areas? So your area versus the state or the average. So I'll give you an example. Here in Worcester, our rate of food insecurity is two times that of the Commonwealth. So if you live in Worcester, our rate of food insecurity is two times that of the Commonwealth, so if you live in Worcester, you’re twice as likely to experience hunger and food insecurity than you are in other parts of the state, likewise, we have the highest rate of Opioid overdose deaths in the Commonwealth. Just statistics that I’m not so sure and we’re like “yay! Worcester!” but those are some of the conditions. So, for example, with hunger, it means that there are a lot more hungry people in Worcester than there are in other towns. So if I'm going to a funder that serves Worcester and surrounding areas, I'm going to point that out that we have two times the rate of hunger here than in other towns because that creates a sense of the need and the urgency. The other thing is often we're serving people who are in lower income strata or perhaps part of a marginalized population. It could be somebody who's a person of color. They may be gay. They may be trans. Maybe they're even a single mom. So there's populations who tend to end up being more marginalized, and they're often disproportionately affected by the issue we're trying to address. We want to paint a picture of any disparities that exists simply because our folks belong to a particular population group. So that’s kind of the scope of the problem and like how big is it. Where is this problem is occurring, so you wanna be very clear. So for example, say in Worcester, we have five food that serves which for a city of 200,000 is pretty significant. So you might want to talk about those five food that serves and where they’re located, maybe there was a particular neighborhood they’re located in, but anyways, you wanna kind of focus on where is the problem occurring.

I’m so sorry, I didn't sleep too well last night. We had a big thunderstorm roll through, so pardon my yawning. When did the problem first surface or when was it first identified? So, you know, one of the things we saw here in Worcester is during COVID. So there are 29 food pantries, and a lot of them closed during COVID, which was really difficult for folks who were relying on them for food. So one of my clients runs a food pantry, and they kind of opened up their doors to everybody and said, "Hey, look, we're here to help." They negotiated with the Worcester County Food Bank to get more food because they didn't want… so they usually get up like 60 to 75 pounds of food per person per visit, they didn’t want to had to like to shrink that down to 20 because now they're just, you know, leaving more people hungry, which is kind of counter to their mission. So anyway, they brought in more food, and they just kept serving people. And so their numbers went way, way up. But what we're seeing post-pandemic, even though the other food pantries have opened, is that the food pantry usage at this one location has not gone down. What's happened is the people from across the city are now going back to their home food banks, excuse me,their home food pantry, os it’s a home food pantry that’s close to their location, but what’s happened is that more and more people because of the economy and because people haven’t recovered from the pandemic in terms of the economic situation, those numbers has stayed pretty consistent, so the numbers went up during the pandemic but they haven’t going down on post pandemic, So that is a heightened level of use that we point out when we're applying for grants. So that was when the problem surfaced during COVID, and it was identified as an ongoing problem post-pandemic when the other food pantries opened.

So that's just an example. Who identified it as a problem? Now, this is very interesting because not everybody identifies the problems that we identify as a problem. There are some people who don’t really care if people are unemployed, there are some people who don’t really care if gay or trans people can access healthcare. There are people who don’t identify the problems we’ve identified as a problem. So we want to talk about who identified the problem. How did it get identified? So, for example, I'll go back to this internship I did when I was in grad school. I was in Waltham, Massachusetts, and there was a landlord who owned upward of 30 buildings. Sorry. He owned upward of 30 buildings in this one section of Waltham, and he was systematically kind of reneging on the mortgage. So each of these buildings' mortgage was failing, and the bank was repossessing the properties. And so the bank didn't really see it as a problem. The management company didn't really see it as a problem. But the tenants of those buildings obviously saw it as a problem because this landlord had been disinvesting from the property. So what that means is he was just collecting rent. He wasn't reinvesting in the building. So there were a lot of problems in those buildings that should have been fixed, including faulty water heaters, which is a 24-hour public health code violation. So some people didn't have access to hot water. Some people had stoves that didn't work. Some people had huge mold issues. A lot of the windows were nailed shut, which is also a massive violation. So there were certain parties that really didn't care about these conditions, but we were an affordable housing alliance, and so we cared deeply about them. And guess what? The renters cared deeply about them because they're paying rent to live in substandard housing. Not cool.

So we need to know who identified it as a problem. Why does the problem occur? So just staying with this housing example, one of the reasons this problem was occurring was because this landlord was really selfish and he disinvested from the property. So we would call him perhaps a slumlord or at the very least an irresponsible landlord because, again, there were fundamental issues that were not getting addressed in the housing, which were violations of the public health code. So, excuse me, part of the problem occurred because the landlord didn't care. That was one of the reasons the problem occurred. The second reason the problem occurred was that a lot of the people living in these buildings were undocumented people from either Haiti, Central America, or Southeast Asia. And they were scared that if they came forward and complained about the living conditions, they would actually get deported, even though that is against the law. That was one of the things we had to educate them about. The other reason the problem occurred is because, at that point, the health inspectors at the Waltham Department of Public Health, and yes, I'm throwing them under the bus, were going into an inspection and scrambled some notes in like a yellow legal pad, ripped out a pageant throw it in a filing cabinet and they never actually put it in an official form and never did any follow up. So, I knew this because I was the intern who was going to the Department of Public Health in Waltham and doing all the action research. So, I was the one pulling out these yellow pieces of paper. Obviously, this is like way before, like, cell phones and stuff. But I would just make a note that this property had an inspection done on this date and the findings are on a yellow piece of paper.

There was nothing else in the file. And so, the other reason the problem occurred is because the Department of Public Health sucked at their job, and they did zero follow-through. So the whole point of having a code is to enforce the code, and they didn't.

So that was the other reason that the problem occurred. So, I am happy to say that we had some very long meetings with the Department of Public Health, and we basically told them, "You can either be with us or against us. And if you're against us, then we're going to have a... we're ready to, like, go a few rounds with you." So, they saw the writing on the wall and they started to actually fill out the proper forms and doing the follow up necessary, so yeeey. Again, there are multiple reasons why these problems might occur.

How do you know this problem might exist? Well, you have to collect the evidence, right? You have to put on your Sherlock hat and go out and find the evidence. This could be data, it could be things like action research like me going in and rifling through the filing cabinets to op ed the evidence and it could just be a report that somebody put out, say it was your local CHNA, which is, what is CHNA stands for, oh my gosh, I just walked myself right into the corner... something health needs... oh, Community Health Needs Area? Anyway, I should probably stick with examples that I can readily cite. Anyway, maybe there's an entity in your area that has published a report, and that's where your evidence comes from. It could come from multiple sources. It could come from interviews with tenants.

So, for example, a lot of the evidence that we presented, the tenants who were in these buildings, were not reflected in the census. And so, they didn't even exist as far as the city was concerned because they weren't included in the census.

So, we actually did a lot of firsthand interviews, and we did our own inspections of the apartments so that we could collect evidence about the conditions.

And so, that's why I know stoves didn't work. That's how I know nails were used to close the windows, which should have been replaced but weren't. This is how I know about mold problems.

So, you have to go and collect the evidence. There has to be some data to support your claims. So, why is this problem a problem?

Well, like I said, some people don't think it's a problem. The landlord certainly didn't think that the housing conditions were a problem. And up until the point where we went and bonked them over their head and the wealthy and Department of Public Health sure did it. So it was a problem for us because we believed in decent affordable housing and we have a very clear definition of what decent comprised. It did not include mold, no hot water, et cetera, right? So, it was a problem for us because of our value system at the Waltham Alliance to Create Housing. We were not going to stand for more than 30 buildings that were in this kind of deplorable condition.

And let's not mention things like peeling paint, rickety outside staircases from the second and third floor, which is like if the building's on fire and you can't get out the front, you got to go out the back. Well, some of these staircases were... I wouldn't get on them.

So, you know, why is this problem a problem? Well, because it was against our values as the Waltham Alliance to Create Housing. And it was totally, you know, not within our mission. We were not going to support this kind of housing existing in Waltham when we could do something about it. And obviously, it was a problem for the tenants. Who wants to live in those kinds of conditions? No one.

So, you have to talk about why the problem is a problem and who it is a problem for.

And who cares about it and why? So, we finally got the bank to care about it because they were holding all these properties, and they had hired a management company who, by the way, was using racial slurs. So, that was a whole other battle we had to take on. We cared deeply about decent, affordable housing in Waltham. And the fact that there were 30 buildings owned by one guy who was a slumlord and the conditions in those buildings were reprehensible, and that hundreds of people were being impacted because some of these buildings have like 18 units in them. So, there were many families who were being impacted. There were children who were ending up with things like asthma, right? So, we started to look for partners who would also care.

So, this is our first stop was the Department of Public Health, because we said, "Hey, there's a health code, and your job is to uphold it. So, why don't you partner with us and help us get these 30 buildings into the hands of a responsible landlord?" We also went to the bank because we said, "Hey, you've overextended yourself on a loan with this guy, and now he's systematically forfeiting on his mortgages. So, it's in your best interest to offload these properties to somebody who's going to be responsible. And, oh, in the meantime, could you get your management folks to stop saying horrible things to the tenants?" So, you have to find people who care about it, right? So, there might be partnerships. There might be people. So, oh, the other thing is we got a local health coalition involved because of the issues around mold and hot water and things so we got them to jump onboard with us, which was, they were phenomenal. So you have to figure out who cares about it and why they care about it and then explain that to your funder as well. So those are all the things that you need about a needs statement. Time for more coffee, perhaps. So the next question you wanna answer is how to construct a successful needs statement? So the first thing you're gonna wanna do is make sure that there’s a really tight alignment between the need and your organization’s mission, right? That should be a straight line from point A to point B. If you’ve got a program that’s an organizational vampire, I’ll explain that in a minute, and you're having trouble raising funds for it, now you know why. So, for example, I was once working with an organization that was having a lot of trouble raising money for their ESL program. Well, they were a health organization, so for most funders, they were like, "What?" The dots were not connecting for them, and so they kept getting either way less money than they were asking for or just a straight-up rejection letter.

So, I kind of explained to them that, you know, there should be a straight line between your mission and your programming. And most people see this as an organizational vampire, which means it's a program that's slowly sucking the life force out of your organization because it doesn't belong under the umbrella of your mission. So, what we did in that case was we connected with a local education institution that was already doing ESL and made sure that they had the capacity to take on the students, and the whole philosophy behind offering ESL was they believe that their patients, who may or may not speak english very well, could benefit ESL and they wanted their patients to be informed and understand their medical treatments and why they were being prescribed and what was being prescribed and to be able to read the prescriptions.

So, I understand their philosophy behind offering ESL to their patients, but it was just such an offshoot from their mission of providing health and wellness services that the funders were just like, "What?" And we always have to remember that the confused mind says no. So, if you have one of these programs that's this weird, bizarre offshoot that people don't quite understand why you're doing it, you might want to find someone else to adopt it. So, you have to make sure there's that straight line from point A to point B, which is the need and your mission.

The other thing we need to do is focus on the client need, not the need of our organization. I cannot stress this enough. Many grant writers make the fatal error of talking about the needs of their organization instead of the needs of the people they serve. So, we are in the business of problem-solving and serving people, not to keep ourselves in business. So, in other words, we are here for those we serve. And yes, obviously we need our staff and our board and our printers and our copier and all the things, but the need is the client. So, whatever that client is needing, that's where we need to place our focus. So, for example, a lot of times when I'm helping somebody sharpen their grant writing, I will often find that the proposal that they sent me to review is full of the things that the organization needs, well, that’s not why the funders give you money. Yes, they obviously expect you to have the staff and a certain amount of overhead and at the same time they’re trying to help the people who are coming to you for help. You are like the bridge, the carwash, so they’re trying to get to these people because they cannot do that  directly, right? You are the vehicle for that change, for that transformation. The other way I characterize this is the difference between a mattress and a good night's sleep.

So, at the end of the day, do we really care? How many coils? Are they individually wrapped? Is it memory foam? Is it a Serta? Is it a Sealy? No. What we want from our mattress is a good night's sleep. And that's what your funders and your clients want from you. So, they need that peace of mind that you're going to help make a difference, right? So, that's what you want to talk about. What is your good night's sleep? Is it that the mom of two kids can come to you and get food and have that sense of relief that she can now put food on the table for her kids? That's the good night's sleep, right? Is it somebody that's coming to you to get out of a domestic violence situation and the huge relief that she feels, or he feels, that they're out from under that horrific situation, right? So, figure out what your good night's sleep is because that is really the need you're addressing, right? It is the thing that's going to help people sleep at night. So, that's two tips on creating a successful need statement.

So, what kind of evidence do you need to include? Well, I often include quantitative data or statistics. Like I said, the prevalence of hunger in Worcester is twice that of the Commonwealth. That is a pretty dramatic statistic. One in every three kids in Worcester doesn't know where their next meal is coming from. That is not the situation we want for kids ever, right? So, find some kind of statistics that really illustrate the prevalence of the problem. I also like to use comparative statistics, which is what I just did when I said hunger here in Worcester is twice the prevalence in the rest of the Commonwealth. So, that is a comparative statistic, and this can be really, really helpful in certain situations where the conditions are very dramatic compared to how they are somewhere else.

Now, I'm not saying compare Central Massachusetts to Southern Florida or California. You have to have a relevant comparison. So for example, I was working with a client in New York City and they actually had their own evaluator. It's the only nonprofit I’ve ever seen with a full time evaluator, it’s like, wow this is awesome. So, they had tons of statistics about how the girls in their program fared versus the control group, right? The control group, which is girls in New York City who are not in their program. So, they were able to show that girls who were in their program completed high school at a much higher rate. Now, these are girls from the same neighborhood. So, for example, the Bronx. You compare girls in the Bronx to other girls in the Bronx or girls on Staten Island to other girls in Staten Island, right? So, you don't want to have these skewed comparisons. So, they were looking at truancy. They were looking at completion of high school. They were looking at things like juvenile justice interactions, so in other words, going to juvie, looking at things like use of alcohol and other drugs. Did I already say teen pregnancy? Anyway, there were all these indicators they looked at, and the girls in their program were doing so much better than the comparison group. And so it just became so obvious to anyone looking at these comparative statistics that this program made a huge and significant difference in the lives of these girls. Comparative statistics are really good when there is a stark contrast between the situation that your folks are facing versus somebody else.

The other thing to look at is qualitative data. What is qualitative data? That’s really related to the thoughts or the feelings or the experience of your client and this is  why I love doing exit interviews with folks, because you get to gather that qualitative data, which gives you a completely different picture than quantitative, right? Quantitative is numbers, and it doesn't tell you the story about this girl with a learning disability who was told her whole life she was never going to make it to college, who, guess what, was going to college because of her connection with this program I just mentioned. So, like, excuse me, those are the kinds of things that are illustrative of the impact, right? So, you think about what is the difference for a young person who goes to college and doesn't go to college? It's huge. And particularly in terms of their economic well-being over the course of time. So, you can find statistics for how well they’re gonna do in their lifetime versus salary depending on their educational attainment. So that’s the kind of qualitative data to use. You can quote authorities or experts, maybe there's somebody who’s an expert in the area of the program, so smoking cessation.

I know there's certainly domestic violence, like Jane Doe. They have lots of reports and information that you can quote. You could cite studies. You can identify trends. So, unfortunately, one of the trends here in Worcester is that for the second year in a row, we have the highest rate of deaths from opioid overdoses. And I know this because I just submitted a $450,000 application so that one of my clients can engage in pretty deep outreach and education and also distribute tons of NARCAN. So, that's a trend that we would like to see reversed, right? So, maybe there are trends in your area that are so positive. The other thing that, I don’t know if you guys are seeing this, I’m seeing an increase in homeless folks. Rents are going up, wages are stagnating, we’ve got lots of other prices going up, you know the gas pump, the grocery store, health insurance sure ain't getting cheaper, right? So, that's impacting other people. We're seeing food pantry usage go up. So, any trends that you can cite that kind of bolster your argument are going to help.

The other thing is looking at industry standards. So, for example, that client I just mentioned that we just submitted a $450,000 proposal for, for their particular model of substance abuse recovery, they are in the top 10 in the Commonwealth in Massachusetts in terms of their graduation rates, so they graduate 52% of the people who come into their program versus the state average which is 33%, so you can see where, again, that’s a comparative statistic, but it's also showing you that the industry standard is much lower than what this client is achieving. So, if there are industry standards and you're meeting or beating them, definitely include them. And if you're not meeting the industry standard, it's a great opportunity for you to look at what you might need to change to do so. And if you need some help with that, I'm pretty good at that sort of stuff. So, let me know.

So, I want to provide you with some additional tips. I always open things up with a bang. I use some sort of quote or statistic to wake them up, right? So, let's remember who's reading our grants. They've just come in from a long day at work, for the most part, right? They're regular folk. They've just probably eaten dinner. So, probably pizza or spaghetti or something like that, right? Now they're sliding into a carb coma. So, you just want to, like slap them in the face from the first moment.

So, for example, I used to use this one system all the time. In Massachusetts, the average homeless family is comprised of a young mother with two children under the age of five. Because who do we see out panhandling? Single men. So I wanted to, like, bust that myth wide open because homeless families in Massachusetts are a young mother with two little kids. We don't want moms and their kids living on the street. That's just crappy. Like, well, I don't wanna think about a three-year-old who's sleeping in the back of a car. That breaks my heart. I'm not okay with that. So you want to kind of just stick it to them a little bit, like give them a little bit of a pinch. I always love using graphs, charts, photos, and maps to deliver information because there's different kinds of learners, and visual imagery gets a different response from a different part of the brain than reading words. So if you have graphs or charts, photos or maps that make sense, you have the ability to plug them into your narrative, do that. Sometimes, excuse me, let me take some water here. Sometimes, if it’s an online application, excuse me, there is that optional thing at the bottom where you can upload additional information, so even if it’s an online application, this is where you stick your graphs and your charts and your photos and your maps, right? So I always look for opportunities to give them a different perspective on the problem. Use only relevant and recent data. Don't go past the past three years, especially because of the pandemic, right? So you could do like a pre-pandemic, post-pandemic, like I did with that food pantry. But you can't really go back into the pandemic because the things during the pandemic were just so weird, right? And so wacky. So try to stick to recent data unless you're doing comparative, right? So make sure you cross-check your facts and that everything is well documented, particularly if you have asked AI to go out and find this stuff for you. You don't have to use footnotes or make cites, but if it is from a particular report, you probably want to mention, like, in parentheses, right after it, you know, report from the Department of Public Health or Mass Department of Public Health, 2018 or something of that, 2020. So you just want to make sure that if you're citing from a source, that you cite the source. And again, no footnotes. Don't worry about that. You want to demonstrate that your agency can deliver results. You wanna talk a little bit about your track record and your history, and remember to underpromise and overdeliver. Now, don’t do this in such a way that, “Oh, we served… with people we thought we could”, because then they’re gonna be like, hmmmm, you weren’t entirely honest in your application, but you want to make sure that you can set the bar where you know you can meet it and then everything above that is icing on the cake. Keep it simple. Remember, the people who are reading your grant application do not understand your jargon. You want to keep your statements clear and concise. In all instances, shorter is better. Funders must agree with you that your project or program meets this important community need, and you have to connect dots for them, again, don’t ever leave it in the hands of the distribution community to figure out and connect those dots, right? I often joke with my clients that I wanna write a grant that can be reviewed by a martian who just arrived on our planet and has no idea what I’m talking about to be able to at least discern that there's a problem, here's how we're meeting the problem, and we have the capacity to meet the problem. So you want to find that balance between the compelling need and your agency's ability to do something about it. No one's going to cure hunger in Worcester. I'm sorry. It's just such a complex problem. Nobody's going to fix it. However, we can work to alleviate it. So you want, and again, don't say we're going to cure hunger. So, for example, I just saw a news heading yesterday. I think it was yesterday. Maybe it was, yeah, it was yesterday. Anyway, it said that the city of Worcester is going to fix homelessness in five years. And I just read that heading, and I went, no, no, you're not. Because the reality is that 50% of homeowners in Worcester are burdened in terms of their cost of housing, and upward of 80% of renters are paying more than a third of their income in housing. And that's the standard for affordability. So I'm reading this headline, and I'm going, you guys are lying. So maybe they're going to make some serious inroads, and maybe they're going to substantially reduce the number of homeless or perhaps prevent more people from becoming homeless. I didn't read the article. I have it tagged so I can go back and look at it in more detail. But that heading, I was just like, that is a straight out and out lie. So do not have your readers have that kind of reaction.

So you also want to create a sense of urgency by outlining the consequences of inaction. In other words, so what? So for example, I'll use the example of the girls program I was talking about in New York City. They have a control group called other girls in New York City that answers that “so what?” There's higher rates of teen pregnancy. There's higher rates of truancy. There's higher rates of dropout. There's higher rates of involvement with the juvenile justice system. There's higher rates of poor performance when it comes to securing jobs, keeping jobs. So those are some pretty significant indicators that are not good. That's not the world we want our teenage girls to be living in. So you want to make sure that you're creating that sense of urgency, right? So for example, this particular girls program had a waiting list. And they were saying, if we don't scoop these girls up now, these are the potential consequences for them. So that is that sense of urgency. Like, give us the money so we can hire more staff so we can meet the need. So you want to create that urgency and also outline the consequences of inaction, you want them to cut you a check and cut your check now, not next quarter, not next year, now, thank you. You wanna put up a human face for the data and the problem by including stories, quotes, case studies, and testimonials. This is an ongoing project that I would encourage you to take on, which is that you always want to be collecting stories. If you can do exit interviews with folks or at least survey your clients once a year, grab some quotes, do some mini-case studies, get some testimonials. Because again, these are other people saying what a good job you're doing, right? And the more third-party endorsements we can get, the less we have to talk about how fabulous we are, right? So you want that community input integrated into your needs statement in your grants. You also want to keep large-scale social problems on a human scale. Like I said, a lot of our programs are aimed at issues that are huge and complex and overwhelming.

So again, you want to scale it down to the bite size. So that’s where the story about the single mom who was living in the car with two kids, who's now snug and safe in one of your affordable apartments, that makes a bite size, right? Maybe somebody can do something about the entirety of homelessness but they can create a snug, warm environment for a mom and those two kids. Again, use success stories and include 1 or 2 of them, you wanna create before and after vignettes to demonstrate the efficacy of your intervention. Remember, you are providing that arc of transformation from when somebody comes to you and they need your help, through you, they landed in a different place, right? From living in the car to having a bed. More importantly, their kids living in a car to having their own bed, right? So you want to create that arc of transformation. And before and after vignettes are a great way to do that. If there are other agencies providing similar programs in the same area, you'll need to acknowledge that. Then what you want to do is you want to talk about your market differentiators. So how are you different? What is your niche? And what is your uniqueness? So that, say you're a youth program. Okay, well, maybe there's eight youth programs in your area. How is yours different? Who are you serving? Maybe you're serving backpack kids. Maybe you're serving children who only speak Spanish. Like, I don't know where your niche is, but play it up, especially if you're the only one who is doing that particular thing in your area.

All right. Sounds like Cedric has some kind of comment or question. Thank you, Jesse. Hang on one second. Oh okay, oh great! Someone here from the Bronx, hello Judy, David Brown, oh hi Eva, the Nuru Association, they’re here from a democratic publick from the Congo, oh you. And then Cedric, oh, it's good to see you and hear from you. Great. So thank you for the chat. I often forget to check it. So thank you, Jesse, for that reminder.

So now what I want to do is quickly, I want to read you a need statement. And this is about a women's organization here in Worcester. And I wrote this a few years ago, so it's about 10 years old, but I still think it's one of the best I've ever written, so that's why I'm reading it. So here we go. Over the past decade, the monthly rental rate of a two-bedroom apartment has increased by 55%. At present, fair market rent for a two-bedroom apartment in Worcester County is $975 a month. It's gone way up since then and nearly $1,200 for a three-bedroom apartment. The high cost of living in Massachusetts means that an individual must earn almost $19 per hour to afford even the most modest two-bedroom apartment in contrast with the mean renter age, which is $12.50 an hour.

So right there, I'm using statistics to create this gap between the $18.50 they should be earning to afford the fair market value of an apartment versus what they're actually earning. So you can see that's a huge gap. That's five bucks an hour, right? And I'm sure it's only gotten worse since the Renaissance came through Worcester and depleted the stock of affordable housing. So a minimum wage earner in Worcester would have to work 93 hours per week in order to afford a two-bedroom apartment or 111 hours a week for a three-bedroom apartment. No one's going to work those kinds of hours. It's not physically possible.

So it just, I use that to just show like the impossibility of the situation. Many minimum wage jobs are part-time or temporary and the people in them are the first to be laid off when job markets tighten. Given that women still earn only 74% of men, what men are paid, even women in higher paying jobs are at higher risk for homelessness than men. So again, goes back to that statistic I used, right? When combined with an uncertain economy and a shrinking job market, it's no surprise that the homelessness rate, particularly for mothers and women, is skyrocketing. In the past several years, there's been a 40% increase in homeless families living in state-supported emergency shelters. Again, there was some emergency shelter report that I found that said that.

During a recent point of time survey, this is conducted by the city of Worcester every year, over 1300 people were staying on the street, in an emergency shelter, transitional housing or emergency motels in Worcester County, such how it used to where in one night there’s 1300 people who are not having a regular place to stay. At least 3000 people and families with children are doubling up in housing because they lack a home of their own. Shelters across the county are struggling to meet the demand. Between 2010 and 2011, the average length of stay in Abby’s House Shelter increased from 11 to 33 nights. That's significant, because that means that no new people can come in, right? Until the current people that exit. In 2012, we found that some women needed to stay with us for a number of months before they were able to obtain a job and or suitable housing. Again, creating this bottleneck. In Worcester alone, there's a need for an additional 12,000 units of subsidized housing to accommodate all eligible residents. Again, found that in some report. The Worcester Housing Authority, that's where I found it, has an eight-year waiting list and has stopped accepting applications for single-room units. With the current government deficit, it is unlikely that most units will be produced in the near future. Local community development corporations can fill some of the gap, but their housing production is focused primarily on first-time homebuyer properties rather than rental units and other local agencies that provide housing are either at capacity or do not accept women with children. Right? So again, showing our niche, women with kids, there’s not a lot of places for them  to go, Abby’s House is for them. The crack to the problem is that the number of people in need of low-income housing subsidies far exceeds the number of available units. When women have indisplace from their housing because they have not been able to pay their rent or utilities, obtaining replacement housing that is decent and affordable. Again, we're creating that standard of decent affordable housing can be difficult. Having already lived with family friends doubling up or in their car, women come to Abby's House having exhausted all their resources. Beyond housing issues, women often come to us as a result of mental health issues. And then I have like four bullets under those. Economic struggles. I have three bullets under there. And then emotional crises. There's like five bullets under that section.

So that's my needs statement for Abby’s House. What I then went on to do was talk about the way in which Abby's House addresses these needs. So I'm going to read this. This is not part of the need statement. This was the next part of the grant application where I said, oh, and by the way, here's what we're doing about all of this. So homelessness isn't just about not having anywhere to live. It impacts an individual's social, emotional, medical development, education, and occupational status as well. In Mass, approximately 95% of homeless families are comprised of a single mother and several young children under the age of five. Homeless women and children demonstrate higher rates of mental health issues and problem behaviors, have significant development, there's a typo there, sorry, have significant developmental issues and negative health outcomes, and over the long run suffer from a lack of educational, vocational and economic success, which places these women and children at continued risk for homelessness. At Abby’s, we strive to put an end of this cycle by providing shelter, housing and advocacy, so referring right to our mission, right? Founded in 1976, Abby's House was among the first shelters for homeless women and children in the United States. Again, market differentiator. In the past 36 years, we’ve helped more than 12000 women and children move beyond the chaos of homelessness, again, kind of plucking their emotions; strength. We gained their footing on the path of independence. With 78 units, Abyy’s House is Worcester's largest provider of affordable housing specifically designed to meet the needs of low-income women and children, market differentiator, and is one of only two family shelters in Central Massachusetts that accepts women who do not require public assistance, allowing us to serve women of all circumstances. Big market differentiator, one of two family shelters. Okay, so that's a big one. Our volunteer-run emergency shelter provides housing 24 hours a day, seven days a week, to approximately 200 women, mothers, and children each year who are experiencing an emotional crisis, economic difficulties, escaping domestic violence, unemployment, or who lack safe affordable housing. Women are referred to us from a large network of agencies, and then I name them all. Abby's House operates 78 units of affordable housing in three buildings and provides support services to all its guests and residents.

So again, this whole wrap-around idea. There are two seven-bedroom apartments for women and children, 16 single-room units at 19 Crown Street and 55 single room occupancy rooms. Okay, that shouldn't have been there at 52 High Street, Worcester. We believe that our residents must play an active role in planning and executing their own success. Therefore, each resident is assigned to her own advocate. Again, market differentiator, who helps her identify her goals and develops an individualized service plan, market differentiator, to help her reach them. Residents must pay 45% of the operating cost of each unit, and donations and grants fill the gap between what they can pay and what it costs. Food services are available to all guests. We provide more than 10,000 nutritious meals each year.

Many of the women we house are in need of and make use of our domestic violence services. Guests also have access to the Women's Center, the thrift shop, and the financial literacy program, all of which provide them with the services, support, and tools they need to stabilize and improve their lives. The Annette Rafferty Survive to Thrive Fund provides women with grants or loans to cover unexpected costs, for example, car repairs, their education or job training, or to take advantage of an opportunity to achieve their goal. Through community education, website and newsletter, Facebook page, other social media and publications, we inform and train the community about important issues like homelessness, women in poverty, PTSD, domestic violence and etc. Abby’s House is run by 10 full-time and nine part-time staff members who are supported by a cadre of more than 250 volunteers and interns who save us more than $440,000 in staffing costs, major market differentiator. Our board is comprised of 18 individuals. A board list is included. So, like I said, that section was not part of the need statement, but I always went to that because I wanted to demonstrate that we are the organization to address these needs, and we're doing it. So, if you want a copy of the need statement, send me an email at [email protected]. Jesse, I hope you can dump that in the chat and just write 'need statement' in the subject line, and we will get it to you. And if you're not already doing so, I'd really encourage you to, um, oh, good. Thank you, Jesse. I appreciate that. So, those are all now in the chat, um, as well as my email. So, follow me on social media because that's where I drop some of my favorite fundraising tips and hacks that I've used to raise over $100 million. And on my Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and Youtube. And that is all I have for today on needs statement. If you have any questions, feel free either ask them now or you can send me and email if they pop up later and I will be back in August 21st to discuss the Top Five challenges facing today's nonprofits and give you tips for addressing them.

So, thanks for joining me today. I really appreciate all of you, and I will see you in a couple of weeks. Thanks, guys, bye.

Thanks for tuning in. I'll be back in two weeks with another episode. Got topics you want me to cover, organizations you want me to showcase? Let me know. Also, I'm here to help you revolutionize philanthropy at your nonprofit. If you want to talk about what that looks like, drop me an email.