# Needs statement worksheet

Build the statement as an evidence chain with four links: population,
condition, consequence, program relevance. Fill every field before drafting
prose. Where a field stays empty, either find the evidence or narrow the
claim. Record the source and data year next to every number.

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## Link 1: Population and place

- Who experiences the problem (age, situation, or other defining trait):
- Where (specific geography the program actually serves):
- How many people, from what source and data year:
- Source URL or document:
- Does the geography in your data match the geography your program serves?
  (If the data covers the county but you serve two zip codes, say so.)

## Link 2: Condition

- What is happening to this population, stated as an observable condition:
- Local figure, with source and year:
- Comparison figure (state, national, or prior year), with source and year:
- What the comparison shows (worse, better, diverging, persistent):
- Community knowledge: what residents, participants, or frontline staff
  report, and how you gathered it (with consent for any story used):

## Link 3: Consequence

- What follows if the condition continues (for the people, not for your
  organization):
- Evidence or reasoned basis for that consequence:
- Time horizon (immediate, school-year, multi-year):

## Link 4: Program relevance

- Why this organization, in this place, is positioned to respond:
- Which part of the need the proposed program addresses (and which parts it
  does not):
- One sentence connecting links 1 to 3 to the program you will describe in
  the next section:

## Data limitations

- Smallest geography your key figures cover:
- Sample-size or margin-of-error concerns (common for small and rural
  areas):
- Data older than three years, and why it is still the best available:

## Framing review (complete before submitting)

- [ ] The population is described by circumstance, not by deficit labels.
- [ ] Community strengths and existing assets appear alongside the gap.
- [ ] Every story used has documented consent and a purpose in the argument.
- [ ] No statistic appears without a role in the chain.
- [ ] The condition is the problem; your organization's funding gap is not
      presented as the community's need.
- [ ] A resident of the community could read this section without feeling
      described as a problem.

## Common public data sources

- data.census.gov (American Community Survey tables by geography)
- countyhealthrankings.org (county-level health factors and outcomes)
- datacenter.aecf.org (KIDS COUNT child and family wellbeing indicators)
- Your state's education, health, or labor department open-data portals