Partners with Modest Needs
This FAQ sheet contains answers to the questions persons ask most often about the application process at Modest Needs.
If you're considering applying for help from Modest Needs, you should review this information BEFORE submitting an application. You'll stand a much better chance of receiving help if you've done so.
You are eligible to apply for assistance from Modest Needs if:
Absolutely Not. Many of the persons Modest Needs is able to help (65% of them, in fact) do eventually become donors to Modest Needs, but you do NOT have to contribute to Modest Needs in order to receive assistance from us. If we can help you, then it is our pleasure to do so.
We ask only one thing of our funded applications: we ask that you leave a testimonial thanking our donors - the persons who made it possible for us to fund your grant application.
Modest Needs offers three types of grants: Self-Sufficiency Grants, Back-to-Work Grants, and Independent Living Grants. The grants we offer at Modest Needs come with no strings attached and do not ever have to be repaid.
To learn more about the types of grants we offer at Modest Needs, please read about our Grant Types and Eligibility Requirements.
At Modest Needs, we offer a 'floating maximum' grant. This means that the maximum grant your household can request from Modest Needs is the greater of either $1000.00 or the amount you pay for your monthly mortgage / rental.
However, when applying for a Modest Needs grant, you should keep in mind that the less you request from Modest Needs, the greater the chances that Modest Needs will be able to help you.
Yes. At Modest Needs, we permit one active application per household at a time.
Additionally, because Modest Needs has in place a lifetime limit of two funded grant applications per registered household.
In other words, once a registered household has received help from Modest Needs twice, no person living in that household is eligible to receive help from Modest Needs at any time in the future.
You can apply for assistance from Modest Needs ONLY by completing our online grant application.
To get started, just click the 'Apply for Help' link located on Modest Needs' main menu, above, and complete our short pre-qualification questionnaire.
Even if you're not sure whether you qualify for Modest Needs' help, we STRONGLY urge you to go ahead and complete our online questionnaire and - if applicable - our grant application.
Our online questionnaire will help you to determine whether you qualify for assistance and - if you don't appear to qualify for our help - that questionnaire will tell you why that is the case.
You're welcome to contact us with questions before you apply, but this generally just slows down the application process for you. Your best bet is to go ahead and complete our grant application and allow us to review your situation in that way.
Probably not. If our application questionnaire seems absolutely irrelevant to your situation, then probably, Modest Needs is not the best resource for you.
If this is the case with your situation, we suggest that, as an alternative to Modest Needs, you contact your local 211 or Department of Human Services. These organizations may be able to provide you with a more productive referral to an agency specifically designed to address your current crisis.
Yes. Our online application form will guide you through the application process and will tell you if you plan to apply for a type of assistance we don't offer, or if we do not believe that Modest Needs can effectively serve your household's current needs.
The best way to determine whether you qualify for a grant from Modest Needs is to complete our online grant application. To begin this process, just click the 'Apply for Help' link located in Modest Needs' main menu, above.
At Modest Needs, we evaluate all applications for assistance using the four-step process described below:
This depends on many factors, including the speed with which you - the applicant - respond to our requests for documentation and other information we need to move your application through our grant making process, and how quickly our donors allocate to your application all of the points that it needs in order to receive a Modest Needs grant.
It is our goal to process everything that we receive from our applicants (new applications and complete documentation packets) on a 'same day' basis. This is occasionally not possible, for example, during times when we're experiencing a heavy volume of new applications. In that case, it may take up to two business days to process a new application or completed documentation packet.
However, you'll receive a daily status update from Modest Needs to let you know where your application stands every day that it is active. You can also check your Modest Needs Personal Page to see the status of your application at any time.
In a best case scenario, it is possible to fund an application on the same day we receive it. However, our experience suggests that it takes a minimum of seven days for an application to be funded after it has entered donor review.
The best way to 'speed up' the review of your application is to get all your documentation to Modest Needs as quickly as possible, and exactly as requested.
If you are prepared to provide us with the documentation we request from you within one business day, your application can be in donor review within one business day of our receiving your application.
Under those circumstances, it is possible for our donors to fund an application as quickly as the same day, though it usually takes a minimum of 7-10 days for an application of high interest to be fully funded by our donors.
If you need help more quickly than that - for example, if you're facing eviction tomorrow - Modest Needs is probably not the best resource for you. Instead, please consider calling your local Department of Human Services to see what types of immediate assistance might be available in your area.
Chances are you haven't yet marked your documentation 'ready for review.'
Once you've uploaded all of the documentation that Modest Needs has requested from you, you MUST click the button that says 'Mark my documentation ready for review.' Doing this signals your Client Advocacy Specialist that it's time to review your documentation.
If you do not click the button 'Mark my documents ready for review,' then your Client Advocacy Specialist will not be notified that your documents are ready, and your application will probably just 'sit there' until it expires. To avoid this, PLEASE be sure to mark your documents ready for review once you've uploaded all of the documentation to support your application.
Throughout the application process, your Client Advocacy Specialist will communicate with you EXCLUSIVELY via email, and through notations that will appear on your Modest Needs Personal Page.
For this reason, it is ABSOLUTELY CRITICAL that you check the email account attached to your Modest Needs registration AND your Modest Needs Personal Page DAILY for as long as your application is active at Modest Needs.
Every day, we'll send you an email update to let you know the status of your application and how many more points you need to receive in order for your application to be fully funded by Modest Needs.
You received the name of and contact information for your Client Advocacy Specialist in the 'acknowledgement' letter that came to you via email as soon as you submitted your new application.
If you've misplaced that email message, you can find your Client Advocacy Specialist's name and contact information using the chart below:
| If you live in one of the following states: | Then your Client Advocacy Specialist is: | Your CAS is in the office (M-F, Eastern Time) |
To Contact via Telephone, dial (212) 463-7042 and ask for extension: |
For After-Hours Voicemail dial (212) 463-7042) and enter extension: |
Contact Your CAS via Email: |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CT, FL, ID, IO, KS, MT, NE, OK, WA, or WV | Davonna Willis | 9:00am-1:00pm | 16 | 16 | Click to Contact Ms. Willis |
| AL, AK, CA, HI, KY, MA, ME, MS, NH, NJ, PA, RI, or VT | Vallen Sarnoff | 1:00pm-5:00pm | 16 | 18 | Click to Contact Ms. Sarnoff |
| CO, IL, IN, MN, MO, NV, NC, ND, OR, SC, SD TN, UT, WI, WY, Guam, Puerto Rico, or any Canadian Province | Jeni Hengels | 9:00am-5:00pm | 13 | 13 | Click to contact Ms. Hengels |
| AZ & NM | Angela Schmidt | 1:00pm-5:00pm | 15 | 15 | Click to contact Ms. Schmidt |
| AR, DC, DE, LA, MD, MI, OH, TX or VA | Fawn Volkert | 9:00am-5:00pm | 12 | 12 | Click to contact Ms. Volkert |
| NY | Huriya Jabbar | 9:00am-5:00pm | 11 | 11 | Click to contact Ms. Jabbar |
| GA | John Arenberg | 9:00am-5:00pm | 11 | 11 | Click to contact Mr. Arenberg |
One favor to ask: please do NOT call your Client Advocacy Specialist simply to check the status of your application. This information is already reported to you on your Modest Needs Personal Page and in the daily status email that we send to you every day that your application is active with Modest Needs.
Calling your Client Advocacy Specialist simply to ask questions already answered on your Personal Page slows the application review process for everyone.
If you're not receiving a daily status update from Modest Needs, then our letters to you are probably being blocked by your SPAM filter.
To fix this problem, simply add the domain 'modestneeds.org' to your safe-senders list.
If you're not sure how to add a domain to your safe-senders list, please contact your email provider for instructions on how to do so.
In order for Modest Needs to be self-sustaining, we must add a small 'fulfillment charge' to every application we receive.
The fulfillment charge, which is determined by our system automatically depending on the total cost to fund your application in full, represents the cost of providing our services to you, the applicant and performing the due-diligence that gives our donors the confidence to invest in your application in the first place.
By adding this small fulfillment charge (it averages about 20% per application), we can offer all of our services at NO COST to our applicants while providing for the self-sustainability of Modest Needs.
Pending applications (applications for which we have requested but not received supporting documentation) remain active for 10 days from the date that they are updated to 'pending' status..
If, after ten days, you have not provided us with the documentation that we've requested in support of your application, that application will be closed due to insufficient documentation, and you'll need to start the grant application process over again.
Generally, pre-qualified applications for assistance remain in donor review at Modest Needs for 45 days.
If, after 45 days, your application has not received all of the points that it needs from our donors in order for us to approve your grant request, your application expires and becomes 'unfunded.' At that point, if you're still in need, you're welcome to resubmit your application with updated documentation for further consideration from our donors.
While you're welcome to submit an application for help as many times as you like, if the same application goes unfunded twice at Modest Needs, we wouldn't recommend that you submit it a third time, as this generally indicates that, for reasons beyond our control, our donors have determined that they are not willing to make the investment necessary to fully fund that particular application.
Unfortunately not. However, you can withdraw your current application and place a new grant request for the amount that you actually need. Doing this may even make it possible for Modest Needs to assist you more quickly.
If you'd like to withdraw a current application, please contact your Client Advocacy Specialist for assistance.
At Modest Needs, we limit the number applications that we consider at any given time to (roughly) the number of applications that we have the funding to address.
We do this so that we can provide the personalized assistance for which we are known to each of our applicants.If you attempt to access our application forms and receive the message 'There are no open application slots available at this time,' this means that we've reached our limit. You will not be able to submit your request for help until an application slot becomes available.
Application slots open up frequently at Modest Needs, on a daily - sometimes an hourly - basis, and they're allocated to applicants on a first come/first served basis.
If you're having trouble getting an application slot, here's a tip: the best time to get an application slot is either very early in the morning, or very late in the day.
You received what is called a 'bad referral' from the agency who sent you to Modest Needs in the first place.
Sadly, the agencies listed above (and too many others to mention) often refer clients to Modest Needs even when they already know - for a fact - that the client they are referring to us will probably NOT qualify for our assistance.
This is - again, sadly - common practice in the non-profit world and is how some larger agencies 'pass the buck.' When a larger organization refers someone to us for a type of assistance that they know we can't provide, that org generally gets to 'count' that referral as one more client served, and Modest Needs gets to look like the bad guy for having to say 'no' to a grant application that, in all likelihood, this organization knows that we should not ever have received.
When you're in crisis, you don't have time to waste with bad referrals, and all of us at Modest Needs understand your frustration. If you receive a 'bad referral' from one of the organizations listed above or another agency not listed, you should call that agency back and ask for a more productive referral. You should also - very vocally - voice your displeasure at this agency's having given you an improper referral in the first place.
Yes. If you believe that your application was not correctly processed, you may contact Ms. Huriya Jabbar, Vice President, Program Services. Ms. Jabbar's email address is huriya.jabbar
modestneeds.org, and her telephone number is (212) 463-7042 x11.
While we understand that you may be frustrated if you believe your application has been improperly processed, please do your best to be courteous in your correspondence concerning this issue. We're here to help you, but we absolutely do not have time for or tolerate inappropriate behavior on the part of our applicants.
Certainly. All of Modest Needs' contact information, including our telephone number and physical address, can be found on the Modest Needs Contact page.
Let us hear from you with your question, and we'll do our best to answer it as quickly as possible.
Please note that due to the volume of correspondence that we receive at Modest Needs, we cannot return calls or respond to email messages that ask questions answered on this FAQ or elsewhere on the Modest Needs website.
