The Investment and Contract Readiness Fund, is a £10 million Fund being delivered by The Social Investment Business on behalf of the Office for Civil Society will equip social ventures to secure new forms of investment and compete for public service contracts.

From Monday 21 May 2012, grants between £50,000 and £150,000 will be available on a rolling basis to ambitious social ventures looking to utilise at least £500,000 investment to positively transform their ability to deliver social good. The Fund is focused on enabling social ventures to access specialist support from an approved investment/contract readiness provider. Resonance has been appointed as one of the first four approved providers, along with ClearlySo, Locality, and Social Finance.

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 ongoing basis.”

Minister for Civil Society Nick Hurd said: “The sector has long been saying that ambitious, visionary social ventures need relevant and targeted support to help them scale up their operations and multiply their social impact significantly.

This three year Fund will support the most scalable and impactful social ventures that have the potential to make a real difference to people and communities across the country.”