Q&A: Writing Winning Needs Statements

What is the single most common mistake nonprofits make in their needs statement that instantly weakens an otherwise strong proposal? And what misconceptions lead to making that mistake?

The first mistake that comes to mind is that organizations often assume that simply providing information is enough to help a funder understand the need. In reality, information alone doesn’t necessarily create a compelling case for why the need matters or why it requires funding. I always like to say, information does not equal a needs statement. Right?

Funders need to know what the problem is: what’s happening? But it’s not just about what’s happening; it’s also about why does it matter? What are the root causes of that? Why is it happening? Who is affected? What does it mean for those individuals or communities that are affected. And all of that leads up to why is action truly needed?

At the end of the day, you are really trying to create a cohesive narrative that clearly connects the need to the solution. You want the funder to understand not only why the need exists and why it matters, but also how your proposed programming directly addresses the need. So it can never simply be about telling the funder, “this is why our programming is needed… let me throw some data at you, and because of that data, please give us money.”

Why do so many need statements fall flat by presenting isolated statistics instead of telling a cohesive, compelling story?

We’re going talk about this at the Take Five session. Organizations often do it backwards. They go out and they find a bunch of data about their community, or about the people that they serve, their target population, and they find the data first. And then they try to tell a compelling story around it. And then try to somehow connect that story to the need for their services. When it should absolutely go the other way around. Tell your story first.

Talk about the people that you’re serving and why those services are needed, and then you find the data that substantiates that. That way, you get a clearer connection between the data, and the case for the need, and your solution to the need, and so that it’s truly cohesive, as opposed to feeling disjointed, “Oh, here’s a needs statement with a bunch of data thrown in.”

Where do organizations usually go wrong when trying to establish urgency without relying on outdated or overly generic local data?

I saw this one all the time when I worked as a funder for a little over 13 years. They think that they have to give you a shocking statistic. Not just statistics that are grounded in reality and factual information, but something really shocking. And so, sometimes they’ll kind of overblow the data.

It’s kind of like, “if you don’t fund us, the whole world is going fall apart. People are going to die, and the apocalypse is going happen.” And funders, great reviewers, can so easily see into that, it’s almost laughable. Yes, we understand this is a problem. This is why we’re a funder; this is why we provide funding to support similar services. You don’t have to overblow it! Even when you’re living where some of your local data is limited, you can still use multiple credible sources to provide a really compelling case.

Why do well-intentioned organizations frequently slip into deficit-based language, and how does that backfire with modern grant reviewers?

This has been such a hot topic in the grants field, particularly when the whole terminology around diversity, equity, and inclusion started coming about over the last decade or so. The fact is, when we use deficit-based thinking, what we’re doing is trying to portray a community or a population of people in a very negative light. And what can inadvertently happen is that we’re unintentionally reinforcing stereotypes about a particular population, a particular race, a particular ethnicity, or a particular gender group.

And it’s not our job to portray stereotypes. It’s not about that. And what that can do in the eyes of the grant reviewer is cause your organization to lose credibility. So, it’s okay to provide factual data, but acknowledge the fact that every community, every population of people, have strengths, they have assets. There is hope; there is resilience. And it’s okay to balance your need statements with both.

From a reviewer’s perspective, what are the subtle red flags in the needs statement that signal an organization hasn’t fully grasped the problem they claim to solve?

The first red flag is not so subtle, and we’re going to talk about this at the Take Five Nonprofit Conference in October. It is when a needs statement refers to the organization’s needs and not the community’s needs, or the needs of the population they’re serving. So they’ll say things like, “We need more staff to do this, we need more case managers, we need more social workers.” Or sometimes it’s about infrastructure: “We need more technology, we need more office space, we need more supplies.”

But grant writers need to realize that funders don’t fund organizations. Which sounds a little counterintuitive, but it’s not. What they really fund are community solutions, and your organization just happens to be the conduit that is providing those community solutions. And obviously, those are things that are going to be tied into your budget. Salaries, technology, infrastructure, supplies, those types of things, but that’s not what goes into your need statement.

The focus has to be on the community’s needs, the social ill that you’re trying to prevent. That one’s not so subtle. And truly, it’s a huge red flag for grant reviewers and will turn them off immediately. Other more subtle red flags are things like when the data isn’t really clearly connected to what it is that you’re trying to solve. So, you’ll read a proposal that’s all about employability services, and all the data will be about food insecurity. Could there indirectly be a connection? Absolutely. But if you don’t narratively describe that connection, there will be a disconnect in the reviewers’ minds.

Outdated data is another red flag. If I look at an application, and their data is from 2002…that’s over 20 years ago. I don’t know what’s happening within this local community today. I’ll also sometimes look at data as band-aid symptoms. They’ve given us high-level symptoms, but they’re not getting to the root causes. Why is this happening? There are lots of other subtle things grant reviewers will look for that can turn them off and then they just become disinterested in your application.

Transforming Data Dumps into Compelling Community Solutions

At the end of the day, transforming your grant proposal strategy starts with recognizing that information alone does not equal a needs statement. Funders do not fund organizations—they fund community solutions that address real human needs and systemic root causes. When you swap isolated data dumps, overblown statistics, and internal resource requests for an asset-based, narrative-first approach, your entire proposal becomes infinitely more compelling to grant reviewers. If you are ready to refine your grant strategy and turn disjointed facts into winning applications, join Andrea Hoff at Brady Ware’s Take Five Nonprofit Conference on October 27, where she will dive deep into these exact frameworks to help your organization succeed.

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