Nonprofits, Stop Doing Needs Assessments.

This has been a lifelong irritation of mine.

I grew up on benefits (social welfare) in the UK, and from a young age, I saw how people like me—low-income families—were spoken about.

We were framed as lacking financial and cultural capital, as if resilience, resourcefulness, and deep-rooted care networks didn't count.

I saw the same narrative play out in schools when I started my teacher training with Teach First. Low-income students were always seen in terms of deficits, never strengths.

And the non-profit sector? It's no different.

The Problem with Deficit-First Thinking

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.

The Same Story Plays Out Everywhere

In everyday community development work, the pattern repeats with troubling consistency.

Take a typical urban neighbourhood revitalisation initiative: The process usually begins with extensive documentation of what's "wrong" with the area.

Non-profits, developers, or local government commission a "needs assessment", often without meaningful community participation, that frames residents primarily as problems to be solved. Lengthy reports are produced, filled with statistics on unemployment, crime rates, and educational underachievement. Sometimes they will include a couple of pages on community strengths, relegated to an appendix. Community gardens, informal childcare networks, mutual-aid networks, faith-based community work and successful small businesses often receive little attention.

The "evidence" gathered from the needs assessment is then used to create a response, often in the form of a project, programme or policy recommendation. These responses almost exclusively focus on fixing perceived deficiencies rather than amplifying what was already working.

This deficit-driven mindset isn’t limited to urban development work—it defines and is even more entrenched in the global humanitarian system as well. Actors within the humanitarian system must spend millions each year on needs assessments. Every thematic cluster, every sector, every agency conducts its own assessments, often in the same communities, repeatedly asking similar questions about what's lacking. Just take a look at the hundreds of humanitarian needs overviews and needs assessments.

These assessments aren't just expensive; they've become institutional rituals reinforcing existing power dynamics.

I know this because I was part of the problem! During my former career as an education in emergencies practitioners, there were were times when I also enthusiastically took part in "education needs assessments" so I speak from experience when I say that the UN cluster system, donor reporting requirements, and implementing partners all participate in an ecosystem where documenting deficits is the primary currency for resource allocation.

Consider this: In many humanitarian responses ( especially places that are considered "easy to reach"), communities might be assessed 5+ times by different organisations within months, each time asked to catalogue their shortcomings, while their existing capacities, networks, and solutions remain primarily undocumented and unsupported.

This isn't just inefficient; it's fundamentally misaligned with how sustainable change happens. People most impacted by crisis aren't blank slates waiting for external solutions; they're part of complex socio-, political-, cultural systems with adaptive capabilities that existed long before international actors arrived and will remain long after they've gone.

Asset Based Approaches Does Not Mean Denying Need

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. For example, "Asset Based Community Development (ABCD) is an approach to sustainable community-driven development. Beyond the mobilisation of a particular community, it is concerned with how to link micro-assets to the macro-environment. Asset Based Community Development’s premise is that communities can drive the development process themselves by identifying and mobilizing existing, but often unrecognised asset".

At the end of the day, any approach that isn't rooted in pedagogies of care, intersectionality, mutual learning, systems thinking, co-design, economic and environmental justice and will ultimately replicate the same power imbalances it claims to disrupt.

Which is one of the many reasons we try and embed equity design principles in our work at Design for Social Impact Lab

Alt text Description: A diagram of Design for Social Impact's Design Principles. Intersectionality, Pedagogies of Care and Solidarity, Interative and foster mutual learning, environmental and economic justice, structural change and action, anti-oppressive theory, systems thinking.

There are multiple methodologies, tools, ideas, and participatory processes around how to map assets (take a look here) . However, without pedagogies of care, asset mapping risks becoming another bureaucratic exercise. Without intersectionality, it ignores the layered experiences of structurally marginalised/historically underserved communities. Without mutual learning, it reinforces hierarchies of knowledge. Without systems thinking, it isolates community issues from the broader structural forces at play. And without economic and environmental justice, it remains disconnected from the material realities that shape people’s lives.

Also, asset-based mapping isn’t just about shifting the focus from deficits to strengths, it’s about shifting/ceding power altogether. If communities are still being “assessed” by outsiders, even with the best of intentions, then we’re still operating within an extractive framework. True community-driven development happens when people define their own priorities, control the narrative, and have decision-making power over resources- and I just don't you can get remotely close to this, whether you are coming from the position of a funder, a community organisation or an INGO when you continue to focus on "needs assessments", which ultimately are based upon deficit thinking.

Hope is a discipline!

Mariame Kaba and Kelly Hayes remind us that Hope is a Discipline- a commitment to action, and not just a feeling. The ideas I’m sharing here are not new to many organisations and activists who have long embraced this approach.

Over the past five years, I've had the honour of working with diverse, community-based organisations and progressive funders that have embraced asset-based approaches to research, program design, policy formation and community activism.

I've seen that when you start with, "What do you already have?" rather than "What are you missing?".

Suddenly:

• Youth weren't just "at-risk"—they were cultural workers, organisers, movement builders.

• Women-led collectives weren't "underskilled"—they were already running mutual aid networks without external recognition.

• "Underserved" neighbourhoods revealed themselves as hubs of innovation and resilience.

• Places that "didn't have any formal education" were rich with intergenerational knowledge, community-led learning spaces, and informal education networks that had been sustaining people for generations.

• Refugee camps weren't just sites of displacement—they were places where communities rebuilt, created economies, and developed systems of care long before external interventions arrived.

This shift does more than change language; it fundamentally changes power dynamics:

• It stops funders and NGOs from playing saviour. More and more organisations, and social movement activists look to map existing community solutions before "creating" new ones.

• It forces organisations to see communities as partners, not "beneficiaries."

• It directs resources toward what's already working rather than treating problems as opportunities for intervention. This is instrumental in redefining innovation to include scaling and adapting existing solutions.

• It creates opportunities for expanding proven community approaches ( informal childcare networks, food-sharing systems, elder knowledge, and youth-led initiatives.)— recently, I've been chatting to a friend in Brazil who is running with the idea to build in "wisdom funds" into a community project, with the hope of attracting different kinds of funding that will enhance what is already working rather than imposing external solutions.

How Can More Folks Shift to Asset Mapping?

If you're in philanthropy, international development, or social impact : ask yourself, are you mapping deficits, or investing in strengths?

Because the way you answer that question determines whether you’re extracting stories of struggle or investing in solutions built by the people who live them?

Here are some practical steps:

1) Start with Asset Mapping Before asking what a community lacks, ask what it already has. Tools like the Asset-Based Community Development (ABCD) approach and TJ Yosso's Cultural Capital Model can help shift the focus. Some questions that you might want to explore include:

• "What skills do people here have that aren't being recognised?"

• "What informal systems are already meeting needs?"

• "Who are the connectors and knowledge-keepers in this community?"

2) Funders ( and NGOs that act as intermediaries), Fund Existing Strengths Stop requiring organisations to frame themselves in deficits to secure funding. Trust-based philanthropy practices and alliances like the Edge Funders offer spaces to learn and be in community with alternative funding models that prioritise community wisdom over external expertise.

3) Cede Power in Decision-Making: For example, when grantmaking, use participatory grant-making models ( although philanthrophy is also flawed- see my thoughts about this here!) to ensure communities themselves set priorities. When people directly affected by issues control resources, they invest in their assets first.

4) Change Your Reporting Metrics: Measure (and again this can be done in so many creative, participatory, culturally-relevant and trauma-informed ways) the growth of community assets and capacity, not just service delivery or "problems solved." What relationships were strengthened? What local leadership emerged? What community-led initiatives gained momentum?

5) Expand your political education! If all of this sounds new to you, check out www.designforsocialimpact.io

This Is What We Explore through our work at Design for Social Impact Lab

If you want to move beyond deficit-based thinking and integrate asset-driven, community-led approaches into your work, check out our courses and resources at Design for Social Impact Lab. We are a certified social enterprise, committed to adjusted pricing and repositioning systems-impacted activists as experts in social impact design.This year, alongside our signature Research Design for Social Impact course, we'll be launching Equity x Education and Design for Social Impact. We are a certified social enterprise, committed to adjusted pricing and repositioning systems-impacted activists as experts in social impact design.

I would love to your experience with needs assessments vs. asset mapping? Have you seen organisations successfully make this shift? Share your thoughts in the comments!

#socialimpact #nonprofits #philanthrophy

Design for Social Impact Lab is a social enterprise on a mission to support organisations and rebel practitioners design equity-centred, anti-oppressive research, programs and policies.

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