The term "authorizer" conveys an imposing sense of size and authority, but in the world of charter schools, the authorizer is often a small-scale office or, more commonly, a single employee for whom chartering is just one among many responsibilities amidst a large institution like a state or local board of education, university, or private nonprofit. Thus, the "blood, sweat, and tears" of authorizing are typically shed inconspicuously from the periphery of an organization that has a much broader focus. Yet authorizing demands a range of capacities, some very new to the public-education arena. In this brief, the authors examine three capacity issues: the kinds of resources needed for effective authorizing; the challenges commonly encountered in securing these resources; and capacity-building strategies used by some leading authorizers to meet the demands of this work. (Contains 1 figure, 1 table, and 8 endnotes.)