The application process for a £10m grant fund to help smaller organisations scale up and bid for public service contracts has opened.

The £10m Investment and Contract Readiness Fund is being delivered by the Social Investment Business on behalf of the Office for Civil Society.

Grants between £50,000 and £150,000 will be available for social ventures who want to raise at least £500,000 in investment, or who want to bid for contracts over £1m.

Ventures will need to work in partnership with an approved provider to submit an application to the Fund. The approved providers for the programme so far are ClearlySo, Locality, Resonance and Social Finance.

An investors panel will decide which ventures to fund. The ICR investors panel is chaired by Big Society Capital and comprises Big Issue Invest, Big Lottery Fund, Bridges Ventures, CAF Venturesome, Deutsche Bank, The FSE Group, Nesta, Panahpur Foundation, RBS/NatWest, Triodos Bank and the Social Investment Business Group.

The Social Investment Business’ chief executive, Jonathan Jenkins, said: "The Fund aims to complement the work of Big Society Capital and catalyse a more vibrant impact investment market in the UK. We want social ventures to collaborate with trusted, experienced providers whose work is deemed 'investment grade' by our expert panel.

"We want to encourage both providers and ventures to develop high quality investment / commissioning grade proposals and have dispensed with traditional sector funding windows to allow organisations the opportunity to submit primed proposals on an on-going basis.” 

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