The Centre for Social Action’s £14m Innovation Fund has opened today for applications, and is offered to commercial organisations and public sector bodies as well as charities and social enterprises.

The Innovation Fund is the first initiative from the Cabinet Office’s new Centre for Social Action, set up to fund programmes that encourage people to create positive change through social action.

The £14m Innovation Fund is being managed by Nesta, and will fund projects that aim to tackle various big social challenges, such as ensuring the wellbeing of older people and supporting people with long-term health conditions.
Grants will range from £50,000 to £500,000 and successful applicants can also access non-financial support such as business advice and making new relevant contacts.

The first round of the fund is looking for innovative ventures and programmes that use social action to achieve impact in four areas:

• Ageing well: Helping people to age well, particularly by supporting people over 50 years to have a purpose, a sense of well-being and to be connected to others
• Long-term health: Enabling people with long-term health conditions to have a better quality of life, particularly through the use of peer to peer networks and groups
• Young people: Supporting and encouraging young people to succeed and find employment, for example through mentoring, coaching, and peer-to-peer networks; and
• Impact volunteering: Using new approaches to ‘impact volunteering’ to mobilise volunteers to increase and enhance the outcomes achieved by public services.

Philip Colligan (pictured), executive director of Nesta’s Public Services Lab and a government adviser on social innovation, said: “We know that social action – people helping people – can make a huge difference to some of the biggest challenges facing communities and the public services they rely on.”

Nesta claims that the projects funded will be required to “work alongside public services and be sustainable as well as supported by a strong management team”.

They will also be expected to commit to measurement of their impact, in line with Nesta’s Standards of Evidence for Impact Investing.

The Innovation Fund will be open for two years from April 2013 and will look for innovations in specific priorities.  The first four priorities announced today will be open for applications for six months, until the end of October 2013. 

Further priorities will be opened for applications in due course.