Who Is Most In Need?

This is a silly question, except it isn’t.

When an organisation has money to spend in a community and an objective to provide a particular type of assistance, chances are there are more people who are interested in help than there is help available. So someone has to decide who to help and how. If we can only fix 50 roofs in this community, then which 50 households are we helping and which ones are we not helping? We have money to rebuild some school classrooms, which community do we work with, which existing school do we support and which existing school do we not support? We can offer 20 places in our education program, which children do we invite and which children do we not invite?

The second part of those questions can be overlooked but is really important because every time we choose to help one person, we are choosing not to help another.

To some extent this is easy. I suspect that most people would agree that a family who have been displaced by climate and have lost everything and who need a shelter kit to help them get set up in a refugee camp are in greater need than an employed, fairly comfortably well-off, single person with no dependents who has had storm damage to their second home. But it’s never that simple.

Is food better than healthcare? Is education more important than roads and infrastructure? Where does housing fit in (and is an indoor plumbed toilet required, or electricity, or beds, or cooking facilities)? Do you fund immunisations or treatments? What about agricultural support?

Or do you just give cash and let the households themselves decide what to spend the money on (is it ok if they spend it on something you don’t think is as important)? Is there any point to providing repair kits for roofs if you don’t provide the tools and training for the householder to be able to use the kits? Or to beneficiaries who will not be able to use the materials in the kit (perhaps they are disabled or elderly or very young)?

Organisations can decide on criteria for assistance, and they can then apply some sort of scoring to see just how much need someone has. They can also look at the cost and the practicalities. If you can rebuild 10 homes in one community for a given price, but working in a more remote place would be so much more expensive and you could only rebuild 3 homes, then it probably makes sense to rebuild the 10. If you are setting up a volunteer-based school build project then you need it to be a country and region that is safe to work in, even if there is greater need in a place with less security and stability.

If your funding has been ringfenced for education then you have to rebuild a school, even if the health centre is in greater need. If you are a faith-based organisation, then you may choose to target the community that shares your faith, rather than the neighbouring community who does not.

As a donor I want to know that my money is going to the right place. I want a charity that is helping the people most in need rather than ‘wasting’ money in places and on people where it is not so necessary.

Asking these questions and understanding the limitations can help both individuals and organisations to help who is most in need and give them what they most need.

However, there is a point at which continuing to ask these questions doesn’t help. Because there isn’t a ‘most’ in need. There are people in need, a lot of them, but there isn’t some ordered list somewhere of the most in need to the least in need. And if finding the ‘most’ in need stops you from helping anyone in need then it’s not a useful search.

If you can distribute 500 water filters into a community then does it matter if 3 families get one who wouldn’t if you’d spent 5 more days researching your beneficiaries? If it will cost you more money to find the ‘right’ need is that a prudent use of donor funds or is it better to be 95% right and spend the extra money on the communities in need?

And then there is matching the need to the help you can provide. If a family most needs their roof to be fixed and all you have are water filters, then should you walk away, or is it ok to give them the water filter (that they also need) even if it isn’t their greatest need? And how do you respond when they say “what good is a water filter when our roof is more hole than roof and the rain gets everywhere, we need a new roof, or a tarpaulin, or something”? Does it matter if people use the malaria nets you gave them as fishing nets? What about as a wedding veil?

It is also good to remember that sometimes money in one place can’t easily be moved to another. If a project in Los Angeles has a lot of cash and a project in Nepal does not, then extra spend in Los Angeles isn’t taking money away from that Nepali project (unless it is), so don’t feel bad about helping in LA, but sure, maybe also help in Nepal.

So do your due diligence, both as an organisation and as an individual donor. But don’t let the chase for the ‘most’ in need prevent you from helping people who are in need.