I am researching grants for a family member and this negative information has me in a state of flux.  The letter sent by Dr. Taylor is beautifully written and makes perfect sense.  He also supports all his claims with proof or policy.

On the contrary, the letter(s) written by consumers, both here and on other similar sites, have no proof of their charges.  It would seem simple to me that if you actually had one of these "nasty" emails, you could simply cut and paste it into your complaint, thus proving your claim with direct, indisputable evidence.

I am going to continue my research and I hope to come to a conclusion that may be of some assistance to my family member in need of help.  I would hate to place them in a hurtful situation when they are already going through so much pain.  I would like to think that there is no one in this world that would want to see that happen...

How did you even know about the ripoffreport except maybe someone told you to go on ripoff and try to make modest needs look good.I also have an email from keith is it was so negative so it makes me wonder why someone would be so argumentative when asking why theirapplication was not funded. The money is not coming out of his pocket but he reponds so viciously about it. you should see the email, or do you work for him?

I have not had anything but professionalism from Modest Needs. I must take issue with the author of of this complaint against Modest Needs. He or she states that the testimonials are not true, inferring that the world should believe the author because as she/he writes: "... I checked them out." Are readers to take your word for this? If I knew who you were and if I knew I could trust what you say as gospel, great, I'm all ears. Perhaps the writer's investigation of the testimonials was conducted prior to my posting a testimonial.

My testimonial was posted minutes after I learned that three individuals had stepped in to help my wife with a health insurance premium. It would not be difficult to figure out which one it is.... It is probably the longest testimonial they've ever received.

I cannot speak for others and their experiences with Modest Needs but I can tell you that I've spoken with Forrest Mason on several occasions. I found him to be every bit as professional as anyone I have ever done business with.

Further, Dr. Taylor replied personally to one of my queries about the online application process. I had sent this to him rather than the technical support contact. One does not often see the email address of the head of any organization listed for the benefit of the public at large.

I cannot speak to the $7.00 fee. I was not charged a fee to apply for assistance. I do wish the best for this writer and for his or her child. I am not saying here that this person is fabricating anything. I'm sure he or she believes what was written. All I am saying is that thus far, Modest Needs appears to be exactly what it portrays itself to be.

Sincerely, Rick Griffith, Oceanside, California

I very rarely respond to posts like those that appear in forums like 'Ripoff Report,' as I'd rather spend as much of my time as possible helping people who genuinely need assistance.  However, as Modest Needs' founder, Modest Needs' reputation (and my personal reputation) is very important to me, and I simply can't allow these comments on Ripoff Report to go unanswered.

Given that I know the exact history of the applicant who filed this report (and the other similar report on RipOff Report), and because, for better or worse, people will read that comment), I've decided to respond to that post here, where it started, and publicly, as I think comments like these deserve to be addressed in a public forum.    

First of all, if you're considering applying for assistance from Modest Needs, you may rest assured that Modest Needs is *not* a scam.  We've been operating since 2002 and have, not only a spotless operational record, but an exemplary one.  We take great pride in the work that we do, and though it is not possible to help everyone who comes to us seeking some kind of assistance, all of us work, in most cases, 10 and 12 and 14 hour days - every day - finding ways to help as many people as possible who do request our assistance.

That said, for anyone who is interested, below are the details surrounding Modest Needs having appeared on 'Ripoff Report.'  

In late March or April of 2010, Modest Needs received an application for assistance from someone living in New Jersey who billed herself as the 'mother of a disabled child' asking for some assistance with rent, and explaining that she needed our help because she'd been forced to pay some unexpected, out-of-pocket expenses related to the care of her child.

As always, we performed due-diligence on this person's application, and made this individual's application available for 'donor review,' the point during our application process at which our donors are able to read, evaluate, and - if they wish - to 'vote' to fund an application with points they've earned through their contributions to Modest Needs.  

Because we receive many applications for assistance, this process takes some time but does give our donors a sense of direct input into which applications they'd most like to see funded - something I think we'd all agree is important.

In any case, in mid-May 2010, when the application of the person I've mentioned above had not yet been fully funded, she sent me an email essentially threatening to publish 'bad reviews' about Modest Needs in 'Ripoff Report,' 'Consumer Pissed,' and in any other forum she could think of if we did not immediately fund her application ahead of everyone else, no questions asked.  

Needless to say, we not only refused to do this, we determined that we could not properly assist someone who was willing to resort to extortion in order to have her way.  So, we closed this individual's application, returned the points that had been invested in it to the donors involved, and refunded the individual's application fee to her (more on that fee in a second). 

Two days later (on 28 May 2010, to be exact), and as promised, initial 'complaints' were posted about Modest Needs on Ripoff Report.  

The initial report - the one you're reading here - is not just the result of malice; it contains information that is blatantly libelous.  We do not ever, for example, perform credit checks on our applicants (we don't even collect information that would allow us to perform such a check); we don't collect our applicants' social security numbers; our testimonials are very real, and of course, the poster here neglects to mention that we refunded her application fee to her once we closed her application. 

I personally phoned this applicant to explain to her the significant ramifications to her of making a libelous post of this nature - a post that we could prove was libelous.  As a result, this applicant posted a 'modified' version of her fictitious 'Ripoff Report' on the same day, this time as 'Lisa' from PA.   If you compare the two reports, you'll see that they're basically the same; one just contains a great deal of specifically libelous information, and one is more general.  However, they are both from the same person.

Now, in the end, it turns out that for us - and for our donors - it was a good thing we disabled this applicant's request.  Further investigation turned up that she is, in fact, a career 'scam artist.'  She and her husband have swindled dozens of people out of tens of thousands of dollars running what are apparently 'fake employment' schemes in dozens of states and has, in fact, has many, many complaints posted against her - and her husband - in, of all places, Ripoff Report! (which is how she knew about this forum in the first place.)  

In fact, had the employee of Modest Needs who vetted this individual's application done so a little more carefully, that person would've noticed that much of the information we requested from this person to verify her situation had been forged (and badly forged, at that).  

For this and other reasons, that employee is no longer with us, and in all likelihood, since all applications undergo a final 'integrity check' before we actually write the check that funds the applicant's request, we'd have caught the attempted fraud anyway.  But the point here is that I think it's important for anyone who stumbles across this report to understand its context, who wrote it, and why.  

In short, neither this Ripoff Report nor its twin have any basis in actual fact.  It was written by a career scam artist who followed through on her threat to do anything she could to 'discredit' Modest Needs if we did not give in to her attempt to extort money from our donors and fund an application that, in the end, turned out to have been fraudulent in the first place.  It's just that simple.  

In closing, I'd like to make just one quick note about the application fee that we charge at Modest Needs, since the poster here has made much of this fee.

From Modest Needs' inception in 2002 until late 2009, Modest Needs didn't charge an application fee.  We allowed anyone who wanted to apply for our help to do so at absolutely no cost to them whatsoever and simply hoped that people who knew that they probably didn't qualify for the type of help that we offered (or who were trying to 'scam' Modest Needs' donors - we spend a lot of time weeding out 'scammers, as you might imagine) simply wouldn't apply when they realized they'd need to document what they'd told us about their applications.

This isn't how things turned out.  What happened instead is that, for the first seven years that Modest Needs existed, we received thousands and thousands of applications for assistance each month.  The vast majority of those applications came from people who either knew (or would've known, had they read our applications guidelines) that Modest Needs was not the right resource for them, or from people who flat out lied to us about their situations in an attempt to get a few extra bucks from kind, unsuspecting strangers.

What these folks didn't realize is that we still had to process all of these illegitimate applications - all of them - in order to get to the applications from people who did qualify for our help and were telling us the truth about their situations.  We had to hire people to do that application processing.  Hiring people to process that many applications costs a great deal of money, and even though our costs are paid by grant money (our donors don't pay for Modest Needs' operational expenses), it became clear that we had to do something to prevent persons who probably didn't qualify for our assistance (or who were attempting to 'scam' Modest Needs) from applying in the first place.

With this goal in mind, in late 2009, we began charging a REFUNDABLE application fee of $7.50.  We charge this fee a) because we want to make sure that the people who are coming to us for help are 'invested' in their application enough to provide us with the documentation we request from them in a timely fashion (we can't help them without that information); and b) because we know that people who are attempting to 'scam' Modest Needs won't pay it (this has virtually eliminated fraudulent applications from our system).

I should stress here that Modest Needs' application fee is fully refundable to the applicant under almost all circumstances.  If we can assist an applicant, we return that fee in 'points' the individual can use to assist someone else.  If we cannot assist an individual, we simply refund $7.00 of the $7.50 fee directly to that person in cash (it costs us $0.50 to process the application fee).  

The application is NOT refundable under only one circumstance:  we do not refund the application fee that persons pay to us when we discover that a person has attempted to defraud Modest Needs by, say, providing fraudulent documentation to us.  By not refunding the application fee under these circumstances, we hope to discourage persons who actually are looking to run a 'scam' on our donors from applying for assistance from Modest Needs in the first place, and from wasting the time we'd rather spend working with people who legitimately need our help.

For example, had we realized that the applicant who originally posted a 'review' of Modest Needs here had provided us with fraudulent documentation, when I received the initial letter from her attempting to extort money from Modest Needs, I would not only have disabled her application; I wouldn't have refunded the application fee to her.  But again, this is the only situation in which the application fee is not refundable to our applicants - even the ones we can't help.

But it's important to understand that at Modest Needs, we don't charge this fee to make money.  We don't need to.  For years, all of our costs - including salaries - have been paid by major grant-makers, so we don't need to charge an application fee in order to increase revenue.  We reluctantly charge this fee primarily because, 99.9% of the time, it keeps the scammers out of our hair and allows us to focus our limited time and energy on the people who really do need (and qualify for) our help.  And one way or the other, unless an applicant absolutely lies to us during the application process, when the application process is complete, one way or the other, we return $7.00 of this fee to the applicant.

I realize this has been a long post, but I thought it was very important to respond to the issues raised in this "Ripoff Report' both thoroughly and publicly.  I appreciate your taking the time to read this post and in closing would simply like to say that if you've applied for assistance from Modest Needs and feel that you were not treated fairly, or if you have questions about the issues (non-issues, really) that have been raised here, you don't need to resort to posting a note at Ripoff Report.  

Rather, you can go straight to the source and write to me personally.  Because publishing email addresses in this forum is prohibited, I will simply tell you that if you'd like to contact me, you can find my personal email address on the 'Contact Us' page of Modest Needs.  

Unfortunately, I cannot promise that we'll be able to help everyone who requests assistance from Modest Needs - we couldn't do this with a trillion dollar budget - but I can make sure that if your application is handled fairly, appropriately, and with the personal care that has always been a hallmark of our work at Modest Needs.

Again, many thanks for reading this post, and have a wonderful day!

I have met some other people who were victims of this scam.. Some people are working together trying to take legal action against this company. Anyone who were victims of this company voice your opinion and legal rights. I will update when I find out more information. Also, check out consumer pissed.. A lot of people are coming out that were victims.

Modest Needs Foundation is a scam charity organization. They charge 7.00 to take your application to find out they won't fund your application, instead they send you an updated e-mail every day explaining that you have a certain amount of days and your application expires with all the donor's Money!

It is based on a point system, while your application stays on pre-limonary status seems like Dr. Keith Taylor opens his pockets and gets rich!

I contacted the organization and Keith Taylor keeps writing me back nasty e-mails trying to defend his sleazy organization.

I think all the testimonials are bogus to!

If you are a victim call them or e-mail and DEMAND your money back!