What is General Operating Support?

General operating support is an unrestricted grant or gift that can be used to cover any aspect of a nonprofit’s expenses. General operating support invests in the overall mission of a nonprofit organization rather than for a specific program. Also known as core or unrestricted support, a general operating grant can be used as the nonprofit sees fit. General operating support:

Exists for an organization’s overall mission, rather than for a specific program or project.
Also known as unrestricted support or core support.
Can come from a gift or a grant.
Much touted by foundations, but seldom available or accessible to new or lesser-known grantees.

What can General Operating Support be used for?

Many grants, and some gifts, can only be spent to benefit a specific program or project at a nonprofit organization. For instance, restricted grants may be limited to funding research on a specific topic. Similarly, a donor may stipulate that a gift can only be used for a particular exhibition at a nonprofit arts center. In contrast, general operating gifts or grants are able to fund the nonprofit at the organizational level, rather than a more granular level reflected in a specific nonprofit program or project.

General operating support can be used for things like overhead, staff salaries and facilities expenses, which a lot of program grants don’t cover.
It can also be spread across several of the nonprofit’s programs.
It can enable a nonprofit to jump on an exciting new opportunity to serve constituents.
Or to respond quickly to an emergency affecting the community the nonprofit serves.

General operating support provides much-needed stability and flexibility. That support may be spent however a foundation sees fit. Especially in the form of a multi-year grant, general operating support allows a nonprofit to plan for the future. It helps nonprofits get off the hamster wheel of fundraising their entire budget every year, which means they can spend more time and resources on their mission and programs.

In addition to being flexible, general operating support covers the costs that program and project support too often leave out. This refers to staff salaries, utilities, maintenance, supplies and all kinds of necessary overhead costs. For example, even when a project grant covers some staff costs (usually a percentage of indirect project costs), there are a lot of related expenses left unfunded. A grant to fund a nonprofit museum’s school-tours program might fund the salaries of the museum educators who give the tours. But who pays the salaries of the people who process those educators’ paychecks or create marketing materials to let schools know about the program? Maybe the project grant covers these related expenses—but very often, they don’t.

And pretty much every program funder wants to see a detailed program budget. But who is covering the salaries of the finance staff that’s doing the organization’s bookkeeping and preparing these budget reports? General operating support can cover those costs as well as program costs. The nonprofit has the flexibility to use the funding wherever it’s needed.

General operating support is a form of trust-based philanthropy because it reflects the grantmaker’s trust in the nonprofit. A foundation that gives general operating support is signaling: You, as the nonprofit staff focused on this issue and doing the work every day, know best how to spend your budget. That kind of trust can build a more balanced and transparent relationship between grantmaker and grantee.

While general operating support is much-touted as a best practice in philanthropic circles, it still represents only a fraction of overall giving. The Center for Effective Philanthropy reported in 2020 that in the decade prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, only 21% of grants were for general operating support. An even smaller percentage—12.4%—were both multiyear and general operating support.