How to Build a Case for General Operating Support

If you’ve worked in nonprofit fundraising for any length of time, you have most likely seen the grant applications that ask for everything except your sanity: multiple attachments, custom budgets, and extensive reporting requirements. Funding for the program itself, but not the staff keeping it running or the systems holding it together.

Meanwhile, organizations are left trying to stretch restricted dollars across salaries, technology, operations, and the day-to-day realities that make the work possible in the first place.

For many nonprofits, especially smaller, community-rooted organizations, this becomes a constant cycle of piecing together what is needed to survive. And the reality is that philanthropy still too often operates without fully acknowledging the disparities built into grantmaking itself.

That is part of why general operating support remains so difficult to access. Many foundations do not openly offer it, encourage it, or even mention it in their guidelines. But that does not mean the conversation is off limits. There is still a case to be made for flexible funding, and learning how to make that case strategically and confidently can open the door to a very different kind of funder relationship.

What General Operating Support Makes Possible

Restricted funding supports a specific program or initiative. General operating support strengthens the organization itself. It creates space for nonprofits to retain staff, maintain technology and infrastructure, invest in leadership development, respond quickly to community needs, and build long-term sustainability, rather than operating from one short-term grant cycle to the next.

Yet access to this kind of funding remains deeply inequitable. Research shows that only 26% of BIPOC-led organizations receive more than half their funding as unrestricted support, compared to 41% of white-led organizations. That disparity reflects a funding culture that expects underfunded organizations to prove stability while withholding the very resources that create it.

How to Identify Funders Who Are Open to the Conversation

But the reality is that not every funder is positioned to offer general operating support, and it is important to be honest about that. But there are foundations beginning to rethink how they give. Part of the strategy is learning how to recognize them early.

Start by looking beyond stated priorities and into actual giving patterns. Grant size, grant duration, and repeat funding often reveal more than a mission statement ever will. Funders with a history of multi-year or unrestricted grants are already signaling a different level of trust in the organizations they support.

Language matters too. Pay attention to how foundations describe their relationships with grantees. Funders who talk about partnership, organizational health, capacity, or long-term impact are often further along in this conversation than their application guidelines suggest.

And increasingly, there are funders intentionally moving toward trust-based philanthropy and more flexible funding structures. Those relationships are worth prioritizing early, before an application deadline forces the interaction to become purely transactional.

How to Make the Case Within Restricted Funding Conversations

Even when unrestricted funding is not formally offered, there are still ways to advocate for the realities your organization is navigating.

One of the clearest places to start is with full-cost budgeting. If a program costs $200,000 to operate, that number should reflect the actual cost of sustaining the work, including staff time, supervision, technology, communications, and operational infrastructure. Not just the most visible program expenses.

Consistently presenting the true cost of impact helps funders better understand why restricted funding alone cannot sustain organizations long term.

When funders understand how your organization creates change, it becomes easier to connect the dots between mission, infrastructure, and outcomes. The conversation shifts from “funding a program” to understanding the systems, people, and capacity required to make that program effective in the first place.

Specificity matters here. Concrete examples often move the conversation further than abstract language ever will. What did unrestricted dollars allow your organization to do last year that restricted funding could not? What decisions are currently delayed because funding constraints limit flexibility? Those answers help educate funders about the realities of sustaining community-rooted work.

How to Build the Relationship Around the Ask

Most funders do not change their practices because of a single conversation. More often, trust builds slowly through transparency, consistency, and a demonstrated understanding of organizational health.

That means communicating beyond program outcomes alone. Share the broader picture of the organization: leadership transitions, staffing investments, strategic shifts, operational challenges, and the reasoning behind key decisions. Help funders understand not only what the organization does, but what it takes to sustain the work responsibly.

And keep making the ask.

A “no” today does not necessarily mean “never.” Some funders are still actively evolving their approach to unrestricted support, and meaningful shifts often begin when nonprofit leaders are willing to name what their organizations need.

The organizations with the most sustainable funding are often the ones that have usually done the work of cultivating trust. General operating support is simply one of the ways that trust becomes visible in a budget.

So, keep making the case clearly, strategically, and without apology.