Capacity building grant
A grant to strengthen the organisation rather than to deliver programme work — planning, systems, fundraising capability, board development. It is restricted money whose restriction happens to be internal.
Part of the GrantTrove grant funding glossary — one entry for every field the catalogue stores.
Also called Organisational development grant · Infrastructure grant
In detail
It sits between project and operating support: more flexible than a programme grant, more defined than unrestricted money, and usually smaller than both.
Its awards tend to cluster in the tens of thousands rather than the hundreds, which makes an award ceiling on a capacity programme a genuinely informative number rather than a distant limit.
Against general operating support
Operating support pays for whatever the organisation needs, including the work. Capacity building pays for improving how the organisation works and generally not for the work itself. `use_of_funds` records what a notice actually names, so the difference shows up as the notice’s own categories rather than as a label we applied.
How GrantTrove stores it
- `use_of_funds` carries the categories the source stated, and reads Not stated where it stated none.
- `amount_min` and `amount_max` are stored separately, so a programme that publishes a real floor — common on capacity grants — shows the floor rather than a range invented from one endpoint.
Common questions
Can it pay for a consultant?
Frequently that is the point. The notice’s categories govern.
Is it unrestricted?
No. The restriction is internal rather than programmatic, but it is still a restriction.
Are the awards smaller?
Usually. The award floor and ceiling on the record are the figures to read.