This report discusses an index designed to assist in selecting projects and allocating funds under USDA's Resource Conservation and Development (RC&D) program. The index combines 18 separate factors into a single score for each project area. The factors reflect primarily economic need (population density, unemployment, low incomes, declining industry), but also include land use and environmental problems. The indexing procedure and factor scoring are presented. When the procedures were applied to 192 active RC&D project areas and 47 applicant areas, the distribution of index scores indicated that a number of applicant areas had relatively high economic need for a project, more so than a number of existing projects.