Design for Social Impact: “Too many non-profits and funders still roll into communities with a clipboard and a mission to document everything “missing.”
Needs assessments have become a default tool for diagnosing deficits, reinforcing a saviour mentality where outsiders decide what’s broken and needs fixing.
I’ve sat in meetings where non-profits present lists of what communities lack:
- “Youth don’t have leadership skills”
- “Parents don’t value education”
- “Grassroots organisations don’t have capacity”
The subtext? “They need us.”
And because funding is tied to these narratives of scarcity, organisations learn to describe themselves in the language of need rather than strength—because that’s what gets funded…Now, I’m not saying that organisations or funders should never ask people what their needs are. The key issue is how needs assessments are framed and used. Too often, they use extractive “data” collection methodologies and reinforce top-down, deficit-based narratives, where communities are defined primarily by what they lack rather than what they bring.
Starting with what’s already working (asset mapping) and then identifying what’s needed to strengthen and expand those assets is different from leading with gaps, which can frame communities as passive recipients rather than active problem-solvers.
Arguably, a balanced synergy between assessing needs and asset mapping can be powerful—so long as the process centres on community agency, self-determination, and long-term sustainability rather than diagnosing problems for external intervention.
Also, asset-based mapping to me does not mean that you swoop in with the same clipboard and demand people document their strengths…(More)”.