Writing An Effective Need Statement In Your Grant Application

Writing An Effective Need Statement In Your Grant Application

This is mostly directed at businesses seeking financial assistance - the same methods can be used for your individual personal grants as well.

The need statement is probably the one important part of your grant application. It is where you state the perceived community needs, how your company will meet these needs and how well-structured your company is to achieve these aims. The need statement is sometimes also called needs statement or statement of needs.

When writing your need statement you should include a combination of facts and human interest stories. A good need statement will:

• Introduce and define the problem that has been identified and will be addressed with the funding being provided.
• Define the groups of people that will be targeted for assistance.
• Provide qualitative and quantitative information and statistics to support this study of problems and target group.
• Not make any assumptions or definitions unless they are supported by facts and statistics.
• Will identify how all of this information is related to the goals of your organization.

Your overall strategy within your need statement is to prove why your organization is uniquely placed to solve this problem within your chosen community. Keep this in mind and you will not go far wrong.

Here are a few questions to ask yourself in order to start getting your creative juices flowing:

•What do we provide in our chosen community that no other company or organization does?

•Do we do something different for our chosen market or community of people?

•Why is our company or organization so special?

•What are we doing that is so different?

•Are there any scientific methods or statistics that have been produced as a result of our work?

•Are there any statistics or surveys that will support the need for our work?

•What do we think will happen if our organization or company was not working within our chosen community or market?

Strange as it may seem, when you are writing a need statement, it’s often easier to write the conclusion first. Your concluding statement should be a strong summary of what you believe your organization or company can do for your chosen community or market. Your closing statement might be something such as:

“Local Legal is the only non-profit agency within the East Bay area that focuses on providing legal support, education and protection to low income divorcing couples. If Local Legal ceased to exist, many couples seeking divorce, in the East Bay area, would be unable to decide upon the best needs of the children and property involved within the divorce.”

Or if you are a company that has minority ownership your concluding statement might look something like this:

“Widget Wonders is owned by Marcel Marvel, who is a severely disabled war veteran. The company provides widgets at a greatly reduced price to small companies that would be otherwise unable to afford this vital component. Widgets are used within the manufacture of medical testing machines which are needed within hospitals to treat olipopple sufferers. Hospital budgetary constraints mean that the price of these testing machines is kept low. Without the widgets being supplied at such a low price by Widget Wonders, many small businesses would not be able to manufacture the testing machines at a price that hospitals could afford.”

Once you have your final paragraph decided upon, you have designed most of your need statement. Now you need to fill in the rest.

If you are a non-profit organization then:

•Your first one or two paragraphs should define the problem that you have seen.

•The next two to five paragraphs should define the section of the community that you are hoping to assist. This section should include as much statistical information as you can find as well as reference to any published works that support your information.

•You should now spend a paragraph or two on your organization, its structure, ethos and reason for being established.

•The last but one section should provide detailed information as to how your organization will be meeting these needs and how you will be spending the grant to meet these requirements.

• Your last paragraph should be the statement you devised before you started writing your need statement.

If you are a for profit organization then:

•Your first one or two paragraphs should define the problem for which your service or product will provide a solution. You should also provide an overview of your products and solutions.

•Your next few paragraphs should define the market for your solution. You should use statistical data to indicate the size of the market. You should also identify your competitors and competing products or services.

•Then write one or two paragraphs about your business, its structure and mission statement.

•The last but one section should contain details of how your services and products will meet the market needs and compete against your main competitors.

•The last paragraph is the conclusion that you defined before you began writing your need statement.

Your entire need statement should be no longer than two pages, although some grant applications may make other restrictions upon your writing.

Remember that you are answering the question “What is the need that my organization will address?” Remember that you MUST have statistical information to back up your grant application.

Read your grant form a few more times to ensure that you have completed your need statement in the correct format.

Now you need to complete the rest of the grant application and check it through a few more times. You are now ready to apply for your grant.