In a move that will undoubtedly delight some grant seekers and disappoint others, the Boston Foundation announced today a massive shift in how it will distribute some $17-million annually in grants.

Over the next two years, the foundation will greatly increase the number and size of its general operating-support grants. Such grants are highly sought after by fund raisers because they are not tied to specific projects and may be spent on whatever the charity chooses, including salaries and other administrative expenses.

However, with its new grant-making approach, the foundation will limit the recipients of general operating support to charities that work to improve education, health, neighborhoods, arts and culture, and the economic competitiveness of the Greater Boston region. It said that, based on eight years of research to gauge conditions in the region, it will identify organizations working at the root of the toughest issues locally to have the greatest impact.

As an example, the foundation cited its efforts to improve neighborhoods by combating violent crime in Boston and its determination, based on its research, that offenders are found among a relatively small number of high-risk youths in a limited geographic area.

The foundation will now “put all the resources we have to devote to this issue in the specific organizations that do a superb job of working with these specific people,” said the foundation’s director of public relations, David Trueblood, in an e-mail.

“We have taken criticism from advocates from other neighborhoods that also have crime problems (but are not within the highest violent-crime areas) and from organizations that work with at-risk (but not the highest-risk) youth,” he wrote. “We are at the cutting edge of this one, for better or worse.”

But the foundation also won some praise for its new grant-making approach from local charity leaders. Catherine D’Amato, president of the Greater Boston Food Bank, for example, called it “good news for the nonprofit community.”

What do you think of the foundation’s new grant-making approach? Do you agree or disagree with the critics?