We introduce and explore near-complete external difference families, a partitioning of the nonidentity elements of a group so that each nonidentity element is expressible as a difference of elements from distinct subsets a fixed number of times. We show that the existence of such an object implies the existence of a near-resolvable design. We provide examples and general constructions of these objects, some of which lead to new parameter families of near-resolvable designs on a non-prime-power number of points. Our constructions employ cyclotomy, partial difference sets, and Galois Rings.AMS classification: 94C30 51E20 94A62 05B10