Statement Of Need

---
name: statement-of-need
description: Draft the statement of need, problem statement, significance, or background section of a grant proposal. Covers evidence hierarchy, framing the problem around the population served rather than the applicant's funding gap, connecting local data to the funder's priorities, and avoiding deficit-based language.
---

# Statement of Need

## Overview

This section answers one reviewer question: *is this problem real, urgent, and
worth this funder's money?* It is not about the applicant. Nothing about the
organization's budget shortfall belongs here.

## When to Use

Drafting a statement of need, problem statement, background, or significance
section.

## Instructions

### Structure

1. **The problem, in one sentence.** Specific population, specific place,
   specific harm. Open with it — do not build up to it.
2. **Scale and severity.** Quantified, cited, and as local as the data allows.
3. **Why it persists.** What existing services do not reach or do not solve.
   This is where you earn the right to propose something.
4. **Consequences of inaction.** Concrete downstream costs.
5. **Bridge to the approach.** One or two sentences pointing at the solution,
   without drafting the approach section here.

### Evidence hierarchy

Prefer, in order:

1. The applicant's own service data (waitlists, intake numbers, outcomes).
2. Local or regional administrative data (school district, county health,
   census tract).
3. State-level data.
4. Peer-reviewed literature establishing the mechanism.
5. National statistics — weakest, because reviewers have read them before and
   they do not establish local need.

Every statistic needs a source and a year. A statistic older than five years
needs a reason for being there.

### Framing

- **Assets, not deficits.** Describe conditions and structural barriers, not
  deficient people. "Families in the service area face a 14-mile average
  distance to the nearest pediatric provider" — not "families fail to seek
  care."
- **Mirror the funder's framing.** If the solicitation talks about "systems
  change", show the systemic driver, not just individual hardship.
- **Name the population precisely.** Age range, geography, and the criteria
  that define eligibility for services.

## Rules

- Never invent or estimate a statistic. If you need a number you do not have,
  write `[NEEDS INPUT: <precise question, including the geography and year>]`.
- No claim that the organization is uniquely qualified — that belongs in
  organizational capacity.
- Cut every instance of "innovative", "critical", "vital", and "urgent" used as
  an adjective rather than demonstrated by evidence.
- Confirm length with `measure_text` before finishing.