Funding for Basic Operating Support: Additional Readings

Cooperating Collections are free funding information centers in libraries, community foundations, and other nonprofit resource centers that provide a core collection of Foundation Center publications and a variety of supplementary materials and services in areas useful to grantseekers. This weekend, Cooperating Collection supervisors from across the country are in New York for the annual Cooperating Collections national conference.

In one of the sessions, foundation representatives spoke about a key component of most nonprofit fundraising needs, general operating support. To explore the issues related to unrestricted support for nonprofits, the speakers suggested the following readings:

Core Support
F.B. Heron Foundation, 2005.

General Operating Support: A GEO Action Guide
Grantmakers for Effective Organizations, 2005.

Highlights of Foundation Giving Trends, 2007 edition
Foundation Center.

In Search of Impact: Practices and Perceptions in Foundations' Provision of Program and Operating Grants to Nonprofits
Center for Effective Philanthropy, 2006.

Not All Grants Are Created Equal: Why Nonprofits Need General Operating Support from Foundations
National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy, 2005.

“No Strings Attached,” Chronicle of Philanthropy, Sept. 20, 2007, p. 32-33.
Abby Disney, co-founder and president of the Daphne Foundation, talks about the benefits of unrestricted gifts.

For other materials, search the Foundation Center's bibliographic database, the Catalog of Nonprofit Literature, by entering “operating support” in the keyword field.