More than 25 years ago, in a book written for civic leaders, I boldly proclaimed that "organizations have no needs."
"People have needs, communities have needs," I wrote, "but organizations have no needs. Organizations have solutions." As you may guess, I've since come to see that people and communities are also laden with resources, and to question the entire notion of "needs."
This is an unusual stance among people who work with social sector organizations and social causes. The norm is to be acutely aware of the needs of our communities and the world--needs that often seem endless and overwhelming. It's far more difficult for us to see that the capabilities of the world are also without limit.
Indeed, many people talk as if needs are the only reason to act, whether at the personal or global level. Just as we're drawn to what's wrong and what's missing, we tend to identify needs in people and situations, and then allow our sense of necessity to determine (and limit) what we can do.
Here's an everyday example: I find myself saying "I need to go to the drugstore" or "I need to get this worked out," even though I know these are wants or desires, rather than "needs." It's as if necessity must be proven in order to justify acting on what I want.
The same habitual pattern permeates most thinking about the advancement of society.
I feel sad as I write this, for a focus on needs as the place to start usually gives us a diminished view of life: just enough to get by, rather than the world we most desire. It's based on a sense of deficit and scarcity, rather than aspiration. Although addressing needs is a worthy and honorable task, that stance may in fact prevent us from seeing much greater possibilities for the human condition.
Even more, it's a small step from identifying needs to defining certain individuals and certain peoples as "needy" (and thus deficient). For what we call a need is nothing more than a set of assumptions about what is missing and about who has the power and resources to do something about it.
That lesson was brought home to me when I went to Nairobi to work with trustees and staff from relief and development organizations in Uganda, Ethiopia, Tanzania, and Kenya. Toward the end of our time together, folks separated into groups by country and planned what they would do when they returned home. Three of the four groups decided (unknown to one another) to work on "the problem of street children."
Who could deny the neediness of children who had no homes, no families?
Well, that had me scratching my head for a while. I hadn't prepared myself for how my "appreciative" work could apply to this situation that weighed so heavily on their hearts. Besides, what did I know about street children?
Then it came to me. What if I were a child of the streets? What would that be like? What kind of person might I be?
That shift in perspective allowed me to ask the group: "What are street children like as individuals? What do they have going for them? What capabilities and assets do they have?"
Beginning with such questions, we were able to see a resourceful group of young people who live by their wits, creativity, and tenacity. We saw that, no matter how daunting the circumstances and how little the hope, street children somehow continue to have a will to live. Learning about the vitality of these courageous children, and where that vitality comes from, would be a worthy pursuit.
So the pathway was obvious: an inquiry into what the street children had to teach the well-meaning adults about hope and promise. As a group, I think we did rather well in shifting our "deficit eyes" toward strength and possibility.
One of the country teams chose a different inquiry. The group from Tanzania decided to inquire into what stimulates the philanthropic impulse. They went on to raise U.S. $1.5 million during their annual campaign--within the country, an astounding accomplishment. What they learned about themselves, their resourcefulness and power, may have been even more important than the money they raised. (Imagine how different the outcome might have been had they started with a traditional "needs assessment.")
What happens when we question the entire framework of needs and needy people, and instead turn our attention to the capabilities inherent in people?