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If you're new to Modest Needs, please take a moment to learn how Modest Needs works.
If you've ever lived paycheck-to-paycheck (and most of us have), then you know what it is to find yourself suddenly facing an emergency expense that you simply cannot afford on your own - the unexpected car repair, the unusually large winter heating bill, the unanticipated trip to the doctor.
A full 90% of personal bankruptcies and the majority of repossessions and evictions - events that can leave families homeless and perpetually dependent on public assistance - begin in exactly this way, with a small, unexpected expense that leaves an otherwise self-sufficient person forever behind on his or her regular bills.
While most conventional social service organizations will not offer assistance to persons until they already are living at or below the poverty level, Modest Needs takes what we feel is a more practical, common-sense approach to charitable giving.
At Modest Needs, we do not seek to duplicate solid, pre-existing programs and services. Rather, we work to intervene on behalf of generally self-sufficient individuals and families - persons who generally qualify for NO type of conventional assistance - at the outset of a financial crisis, a time when our 'small change' truly has the power to make 'a world of difference' in the future of a struggling individual or family.
By offering to assist individuals and families before they have been forced into the unforgiving cycle of poverty, Modest Needs' donors work with our applicants to beat the cycle of poverty before it starts.
In the process, we do our best to promote the self-sufficiency of hard-working persons while lessening the burden of our already overburdened social assistance programs.
Modest Needs makes three types of grants, all designed to stop the cycle of poverty before it starts for a struggling individual or family. Our grants generally remit payment for an emergency expense on behalf of an applicant.
All of the services we provide at Modest Needs are absolutely free, and our grants come with absolutely no strings attached. They do not ever have to be repaid.
Applicants should know that though our maximum grant is $1000, historically, our average grant has been for about $180. In addition, to ensure that our available funding is used only for the purpose intended, Modest Needs does not pay cash directly to our approved applicants. Rather, when we approve a grant to cover an emergency expense, we pay that grant directly to a creditor.
If you're facing a temporary financial crisis because of an unexpected emergency expense and qualify for no other type of assistance, you can complete and submit an application either online (recommended) or by mail simply by visiting our Applications and Instructions page.
If we have an application slot available, the entire application process should take you less than ten minutes. And, if our donors indicate a high degree of interest in your application, we will make every effort to fund it as quickly as possible, usually within two weeks or less.
At Modest Needs, our donors are not just persons who write checks and then disappear. They are the heart of the Modest Needs Community, and their experience here is informed by three principles central to the Modest Needs philosophy:
Because we believe that giving should be an interactive and personally rewarding experience, Modest Needs is proud to be the only registered charity of its type to give its donors direct, personal input into how their gifts actually are allocated among Modest Needs' applicants. In addition, persons whose gifts average just $1.00 a day or more have the opportunity to adopt and personally fund applications for assistance that they've found particularly moving.
To keep the giving process safe, the work we do Modest Needs takes place in a completely secure environment. The most sensitive areas of our website are encrypted by state-of-the-art secure digital certificates, and our online payment form is powered by Bank of America and Authorize.net, the leaders in secure online giving.
In addition, our donors never have to worry about whether our applicants have been truthful about their situations. We make applications available for donor review and/or adoption only after we have in hand the documentation necessary to verify them.
Finally, at Modest Needs, we believe that the best kind of giving is personal giving. For this reason, we've opted not to pursue government funding in support of this work. The applications for help that we receive are funded exclusively by members of the Modest Needs Community.
The work we do at Modest Needs simply would not be possible but for the personal support and generosity of these remarkable individuals - persons just like you.
