A £10m Big Lottery grant fund to help charities and social enterprises get ready to access social investment has been launched today after a nine-month delay.

The Big Potential fund will be open to organisations in England. It will accept applications from 10 March onwards.

It will be delivered by the Social Investment Business over three years, in partnership with Charity Bank, Social Enterprise UK, Locality and the University of Northampton.

It will make grants of between £25,000 and £75,000 to help organisations carry out “in-depth investment readiness work” with a small group of "approved providers".

Before charities apply to the fund they will be able to access support from Charity Bank, Social Enterprise UK or Locality before submitting an application. They will then be expected to approach an approved provider, and the charity and provider will make a joint bid to the fund.

The fund has not appointed any approved providers yet, but organisations can apply to become one from today.

A spokeswoman for the Social Investment Business said her organisation already had a sister programme running – the Investment and Contract Readiness Fund (ICRF), a £10m fund backed by the Office for Civil Society – which uses a similar model, and has a list of more than 30 approved providers.

She said the list would not be exactly the same because providers for Big Potential will have to prove that they can support organisations which are at “a very early stage of their thinking”.

“The ICRF is there to support organisations seeking more than £500,000 of social finance,” she said. “This fund is aimed at those seeking much smaller amounts of money.”

BIG originally chose business consultancy Exemplas to deliver the scheme, with support from Charity Bank. It was due to start last summer, however the relationship between the BIG and Exemplas broke down, and the contract was retendered.

BIG has recently agreed terms with the SIB to take over the running of the fund.