How to get funding for wages and operations
Salaries, rent, facilities, admin — and how to frame them so funders can say yes.
Kia ora Fundsorter community — Bonnie here from the support team. In our last post we talked about how to write a funding need that does the work for you. This time I want to share some of what I've learned about one of the most common parts of that mahi: requesting funding for wages and operational costs.
Finding funding for operational costs can be tricky to navigate, because many funders focus on resourcing programmes and projects instead of ongoing core costs. Some funders exclude them altogether. Others specifically prioritise them, like COGS — but if you don't fit the criteria, or you miss the funding window, it's not always clear what to do next.
So I've been digging into the funders that do welcome operational requests, and how to frame these costs when funders are project-focused. Here's where I've landed.
Funders that support operational costs
A handful of funders in Aotearoa are upfront about backing operating costs — including salaries, rent, power, phone, and admin.
COGS — Community Organisation Grants Scheme. Government-funded, administered by DIA. Explicitly funds "the running or operational costs of organisations that provide community-based social services." Average grant around $3,000, with 37 Local Distribution Committees making decisions across the motu. Currently open 15 April – 13 May 2026. Eligibility cap: your organisation must have under $2 million annual operating expenditure for each of the past 2 years.
BayTrust (Bay of Plenty). Maybe my favourite example for clarity — their eligibility page literally says operating cost grants "can include salaries or a salary component, plus general overheads of rent, power, phone, and administration costs." They typically fund up to 50% of total cost.
Rātā Foundation (Canterbury, Nelson/Tasman, Marlborough/Kaikōura, and the Chatham Islands). A $695m investment portfolio that distributed $26.5m in grants in 2025. They explicitly support both operating costs (salaries, rent, power, phone, admin) and project costs.
Foundation North (Auckland & Northland). Will fund operating costs — but capped at 30% of your organisation's total expenditure. They don't fund salaries of health professionals or core health/social services. Marae can request up to $25,000 for operating costs like insurance and utilities.
Quick heads-up on Lottery Community — historically a flagship multi-year operational fund (up to three years), but it's currently closed to new applications. Worth watching for when it reopens in July.
Framing operational costs as project costs
Requesting your salary or admin costs as necessary for project delivery shifts the lens funders see it through.
Compare these two examples:
A request for an administrative lead's salary: “The paid role will allow us to continue all our incredible work, and without it, our volunteers would drown in administrative tasks.”
vs.
A request for a living wage salary for 25 hours a week for an administrative lead to enable the delivery of our next 6 months of programming, accounting for 20% of the project's total cost. 100 Volunteer hours listed as in-kind contributions, and the programming impact of 500 community members to upskill.
Same role, same money — but the second one has a start and end date, an approximate budget, a defined programme, and a tangible impact. Small changes to the same information, with very different results.
Tips that work
When you're requesting operational costs, it's worth thinking about what funders prioritise. A few moves that tend to land well:
Give every operational cost a timeline. Frame it as 12-months of the coordinator role, a 6-month programme phase, an admin function tied to a specific outcome. End dates make it readable as a project.
Lead with the deliverable, not the desk. "Coordination of 12 rangatahi workshops" lands better than "0.5 FTE coordinator salary" — but that salary sits inside the programme description.
Calculate your overheads honestly. If a project takes up 30% of your team's time, then 30% of rent, power, and phone is a legitimate project cost. Show the maths while framing it as a legitimate project cost.
For wages, include the details. Job title, salary range, hours, timeline, key skills required, whether or not you have a person in place already (hint: funders prefer that). Funders want to know what they're paying for.
Match the funder's priorities. Is your building a heritage site or a cultural and community hub? Are your facility upgrades regenerative or solar-powered? Is the programme led by someone or serving a group that might be a priority population (e.g. women, Maori, youth)? Will the funding open up community impact you can describe? List those connections clearly. Thanks to Fundsorter’s advanced matching algorithm, it can pick out the specific details that align to a wide range of funders’ priorities. But if you don’t mention the facts in your description, the system can’t pick it up.
Find them in Fundsorter
When you're running scans, try keywords like operating costs, salaries, core funding, running costs, or administration. And when you're drafting your funding needs, remember the framing: operational costs aren't a weakness in your narrative, they're the engine that delivers everything you're promising.
Happy funding!
Ngā mihi, Bonnie & the Fundsorter team