Are you tired of government and non-profit agencies saying you “make too much money” to receive help from their programs and services?

There are other sources of funding and assistance available for working class and middle class families. You just need to know where to look, and be willing to follow up on those leads.

One resource I just learned about is a charity called Modest Needs. The agency’s goal is to assist families who need a small amount of “well-timed financial assistance” to help them remain self-sufficient. Yes, Michigan families can apply.

Here’s an introduction from their site:

The cycle of poverty begins when a struggling family encounters a small, extra expense for which they just couldn’t prepare – an unxpected car repair or an unplanned illness that results in an extra trip to the doctor, for instance.

But when a family loses its income because the primary breadwinner can’t afford the simple medical care, car repair or other expense that would’ve kept him or her gainfully employed, that family has no choice but to turn to the state for support. We all know that when a person becomes newly unemployed and must depend on the public welfare system to survive, that person loses a measure of dignity. But unemployment also takes a devastating economic toll, both on the newly unemployed person’s family and on the state that family calls ‘home’.

The grants that Modest Needs makes are designed to short-circuit the cycle of poverty by preventing families from losing their jobs, their homes, and their self-sufficiency.

We do this by remitting payment for a small, emergency expense that a struggling family could not afford without ‘borrowing’ from the money they’ve set aside for their regular bills – their rent, utility and food money, for example. To date, the average grant made by Modest Needs has been $183.83, but its value far exceeds the cost of the gift itself.

Requests currently posted on the site include car repairs, dental work, electric bill and a new refrigerator.

Families who are eligible for this program are those whose household income is between 130 and 200 percent of the federally defined poverty level, or as the web site explains, “meaning you will not have access to conventional types of charitable assistance.”

Keep in mind that you want to apply as soon as you are considering a request because the agency reports it can take 7 to 10 days for even an emergency application to be “fully funded” by its supporting donors.

In addition, you need to be available for same-day e-mail questions and may be expected to scan and send supporting documents through the e-mail. There also is a limit as to how many active applications the agency can handle at one time, so you may have to wait until someone else’s grant is cleared off the request list.

There is a lifetime limit of two funded grants per household.

And if you would like to become a donor, that’s how this program is funded. Recent contributors include residents of Detroit, Dearborn, White Lake and Bloomfield Hills.