The Office for Civil Society has opened a £20m fund offering grants starting at £100,000 for charities, businesses and public sector bodies to run social action projects.

The fund is being run by the Social Investment Business on behalf of the Office for Civil Society and will offer grants of £100,000 and upwards to projects across England that will expand volunteering and giving of time, money, knowledge and assets.

It is being run along three main themes of social action -

• Social action in the community
• Social action inspired by the Olympics and Paralympics legacy
• Social action for all ages

Preference will be given to proposals that do the most to increase social action, to organisations that have a matched funding commitment and to ideas that are large-scale or can be scaled up or replicated.

The Social Investment Business chief executive Jonathan Jenkins said: “We are being really ambitious with the Social Action Fund. The minimum grant available is £100,000 but there is no upper limit - we want people to think big. We want to hear from people who perhaps run successful volunteering programmes on a small scale and know they could have a much bigger impact with additional funding.  Proposals for projects worth £1m plus are encouraged.

“We are also looking for a broad range of volunteering and social action projects to support. We would love to receive applications for projects like time banks, mentoring programmes or community sports days, for example. The overarching aim of the Fund is to finance projects that enable people to come together to support each other and improve the quality of life in their community, now and into the future.”

The deadline for grant applications will be noon on Wednesday 2 November.  A second application window will open in early 2012.

The organisations must have operated for more than two years and have a minimum turnover of £100k. Full detailed eligibility criteria and application form and guidelines are available online.