The government has today awarded a total of £1.7m from its £100m Transition Fund to 18 charities.

The largest grant is £198,899 to Bede House Association.

The government said it was keen to get the Transition Fund out as soon as possible and would announce many hundreds more grants over the coming months.

Nick Hurd, minister for civil society, said the organisations who were awarded funding had shown innovative approaches such as setting up social enterprise arms or proposing mergers.

"The funding we are announcing today will play a key role in helping organisations to prepare for future opportunities that will be opened up by public service reform," he said.

"The organisations that we are awarding funding to today are the first of many such awards and reflect the incredible diversity of the civil society sector, showing an innovative approach to the challenges they face – from setting up social enterprise arms to re-designing public services to proposing mergers."

Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude added: "The Transition Fund is not intended to be a substitute for public funding cuts, made necessary by the deficit we inherited, but it will help to ensure that valuable civil society organisations will have some support from the state prior to the opening up of public sector markets."

However, Civil Society has been unable to find out how much the Transition Fund has been oversubscribed by.  Enquiries to the Big Fund which is administering the Fund on behalf of the government, were referred to the Office for Civil Society, who has refused to provide the information.

Nick Hurd has said he was surprised that the amount applied for was not as much as might have been expected.

>>View table of Transition Fund awards<<