Operational grants for nonprofits

Three phrases appear in filings and they are not the same thing. Read them before you read any list.

A program grant pays for a named activity. An operational grant pays for the organization that runs it. If you cannot point to the line in the filing, you are guessing.

We parsed every Form 990-PF in one 2025 IRS e-file batch. Of 7,407 returns, 5,447 carried a grant list, showing 96,932 grants worth $4.30 billion.

Read that last column twice. Operating giving is not diluted across the sector. It sits in the hands of a few hundred foundations who give almost everything that way, and it is close to absent everywhere else.

One caveat that matters: purpose text is free-form. A funder can write a program name and still pay for core costs. Treat 8.5% as a floor, not a census.

1. Open the foundation's latest Form 990-PF and go to Part XIV, line 3a, "grants and contributions paid". On filings for 2020 and earlier, the grant list is Part XV.
2. Read the purpose column. Not the recipient names, not the totals. The purpose column.
3. Count the grants that say general operating, operating support, core support or unrestricted. Add their dollars.
4. Divide by the foundation's total grants paid. Under 10% means operating money is an exception there. Above 40% means it is how they work.
5. Compare their median grant with what you plan to ask for. A funder whose median is $5,000 will not read a $75,000 request.
6. Open line 2 for the application terms, then the PDF for the preselected checkbox.

Step 6 matters more than it sounds, and the next section explains why. If reading a filing is new to you, our guide to reading a 990-PF walks through each part first.

Twelve large national funders, each read from its own filing. The share column is the portion of that funder's grant dollars described in operating or general-support language.

Scale is not the signal. Ford puts 57% of its grant dollars into operating language. Kellogg's 1,778 grants carry none of it in the purpose column. Casey sits at 6%. Weingart is a twelfth of Ford's size and gives at 48%, though only in California. A big name tells you nothing about whether core costs are fundable there.

Two notes on reading this table. Kellogg's zero describes its purpose-column wording, not a claim that it never funds core costs. Duke's 13% comes from seven very large multi-year awards, which is why its grant count and its share tell different stories.

Fourteen funders where a request between $10,000 and $100,000 is realistic. This is the table most organizations will actually use.

Rows marked general support use the weaker wording, which is why they are labelled rather than mixed in silently. Together these fourteen paid $182.8 million, and $98.9 million of it (54%) went out in operating or general-support language.

Otto Bremer is the clearest example of a working operating funder. Its 883 grants include 571 written plainly as "general operations", at a $50,000 median, with guidelines published on its site. Weingart shows the same pattern at the other end of the country: almost half its dollars in operating support, a $10,000 median, California only.

Every figure here is one line in a public filing. None of it is a recommendation to apply, and none of it comes from a database summary.

A funder reading an operating request looks for two things. How much of your budget is genuinely flexible, and whether you can name the core costs you are covering.

1. Show the unrestricted column in your budget. A funder sees restricted revenue first. If your budget does not separate it, the request reads as a program ask wearing a different label. Our nonprofit budget template is built around that split.
2. Name the costs, not the mission. Two staff lines, insurance, audit, the rent. Operating money is easier to approve when the ask has a shape.
3. Match the amount to their median. Use the tables above. Asking above a funder's own median is a reason to decline that has nothing to do with your work.
4. Ask before their cycle closes, not after. Line 2 of the filing usually states a window.

None of this guarantees an award. It does mean the request looks like the ones that funder already makes.

• Whether the foundation accepts unsolicited requests. The "preselected charitable organizations only" checkbox appears on Part XIV line 2 of the PDF and does not appear in the IRS XML data at all. This is why no funder above is labelled open or closed.
• What will be true this year. A 990-PF is filed four and a half months after the fiscal year closes, and can be extended by six months.
• Whether a purpose line is accurate. Foundations write their own purpose text, in their own words, with their own consistency.
• Anything about your relationship with the funder. That is not in a form.

Read the filing to narrow the list. Read the PDF and the funder's own site before you write a proposal.

Reading one filing takes ten minutes. Reading two hundred does not, and the list changes every year as foundations file.

mission360 reads foundation filings and builds funder briefings inside the grant workspace, so you see which funders give operating support, at what size, and whether they fit. It drafts from the materials you approve and submits nothing on its own, and your team decides what goes out. It does not cover state or local funding.