The Official Modest Needs Blog

A New Face of the Uninsured

Losing your job means losing your ability to support yourself. But it also means losing something almost as critical: your health insurance.

According to this NPR piece, more and more uninsured middle-class Americans are finding themselves resorting to the community health clinics once reserved for the extremely poor. They're putting off elective surgeries. They're worrying more about the next benefits package than the next salary.

It's a story that we know all too well at Modest Needs. Just take a glance at these three applications, or the dozens of others on our site. Middle-class families aren't just battling to keep food on the table. They're having to battle to stay healthy, too.

COBRA payment for cancer patient
Laid off and Left with an MRI Bill
Any Help Will Be Good - Medical Bill

Modest Needs' Holiday Hours

Modest Needs' offices will be closed tomorrow -- Friday, July 3rd -- in celebration of Independence Day. We will re-open at our usual time on Monday, July 6th.

In the meantime, I wish you all a wonderful and safe 4th of July weekend!

A Very Green Application

These days, energy costs a pretty penny -- not just for us, but for our fragile environment. And so I'd like to give kudos to this applicant, who's doing her best to be not only financially responsible but environmentally conscious as well. 

Because her local utility power grid doesn't pass by her home, the connection fees will run upwards of $10,000. Instead of shelling out all that cash, she's just looking for a few hundred dollars to afford a wind generator to keep her computer (and her livelihood) humming along during the day.

Offering a helping hand to this applicant means doing the same for the planet. Pretty amazing, no?

The Self-Employed Depression

A few weeks ago I ran across a New York Times article describing the specific challenges of the self-employed in today's tumultuous economy. When times were good and clients were paying up, the freedom and flexibility of self-employment seduced thousands of now-yoga instructors, chefs, personal trainers and the like. But now that wealthy clients and corporations have tightened their belts, the freelance life (without job security or health insurance) has lost a quite a bit of its luster.

The yoga instructor profiled here finds herself in line for food stamps at the end of the article. And that's a situation that we're seeing more and more at Modest Needs. Graphic designers, photographers, beauticians, and countless other self-employed individuals are waking up one morning a few hundred dollars away from eviction and even homelessness. Just take a few minutes to browse our applications, and I'm certain you'll run across a few.

If you know of a struggling self-employed person faced with a short-term financial crisis, please don't hesitate to send them to Modest Needs. We'd love to be able to help.

Less Than 1 Week Left!

With less than a week to go in June, we're more than halfway to the $100,000 we need to claim a $200,000 matching grant. Will you help put us over the top?

There has never been a better time to give at Modest Need.

Thoughtful Gifts for Dads and Grads

Just because you're last minute with your Father's Day shopping doesn't mean that you can't still choose something incredibly meaningful.

Modest Needs Gift Certificates represent a wonderful way to thank dear old Dad for all of the giving that he has done in his life, and to show him that you've learned the value of helping others at the same time! They're also a great choice for high school and college graduates, who are part of a community-serving generation that I hope will accomplish amazing work in the years to come.

Remember: Our gift certificates start at only $10 and enable the recipient to put the money toward the application of his/her choosing. It only takes a minute to order one at modestneeds.org.

And with that, here's wishing all you dads out there a fantastic Father's Day weekend!

Geography of a Recession

The New York Times has a fascinating map of the US, which displays unemployment numbers broken down by county. It's a striking, big-picture look at how manufacturing centers and real estate bubbles have experienced some of the biggest job losses. The deeper the red, the more people jobless.

Join Me for an Inspiring Evening of Cocktails!

One Wednesday, June 24th, I'll be hosting a cocktail party in Chicago, and I'd love to see all of you Modest Needs supporters there! We'll be serving wine and light hors d'oeuvres. All of the details are below.

John David Mooney Foundation Art Gallery
114 W. Kinzie Street
Chicago, IL
Wednesday, June 24th
6-8pm

If you're interested in attending, please RSVP to Modest Needs' Chief Operating Officer, Huriya Jabbar, at huriya@modestneeds.org or 415-956-9295. I look forward to meeting as many of you as can make it!

Help Us Claim Our Brand-New Matching Grant!

We just received some FANTASTIC news this week at Modest Needs. A major gift has unexpectedly fallen into our lap -- to the tune of a whopping $200,000. But there's a catch.

In order to claim ANY of this grant funding, we must first raise $100,000 from individual donors who support Modest Needs. And we've only got until the end of this month (June) to do it.

This money couldn't come at a more important time. Like so many nonprofits, we lost a substantial grant this past February -- one that we've counted on for the last couple of years -- at a time when Modest Needs applications were reaching all-time highs. As you can imagine, I've been plugging away to try and replace that lost grant funding, and this week we hit the jackpot with an extremely generous offer from a foundation that wishes to remain anonymous.

Although raising $100,000 from individual donors within the month of June seems aggressive, it's a goal I'm confident that we can reach.

So if you were thinking of donating to Modest Needs at all in 2009, I urge you to consider making a contribution this month. As always, we make it convenient and easy right on modestneeds.org.

Thanks so much for reading. And have an absolutely wonderful Wednesday!

Summertime Snowballs

I recently reached out to some of the individuals who'd received Bridge Grants over the last few months to see if they'd managed to secure new employment. The results are just now coming in, but I thought I'd share a lovely note from one woman, who called her Bridge Grant the very beginning of a "snowball effect" -- and an awfully joyful one at that.

"The impact the Bridge Grant had on my life was nearly instantaneous. I was pushed into the uncertain world of freelance writing when my full-time position at the Houston Chronicle was cut. Just before I heard about Modest Needs, I had secured some freelance writing with the Houston Chronicle, but I needed a reliable car to get out to conduct interviews and meet with subjects.

Now that my car has been fixed,  I have  more writing work than I thought possible in this uncertain newspaper industry! I am writing for two sections regularly, and have been given several regular beats to cover each month... It's so refreshing to find people who want to help others before it gets to the point where they have to rely on state or federal assistance. Modest Needs keeps people from ever falling through the cracks, and that means a lot to all of us who worried that we might soon be that unfortunate soul."