Criteria

All social ventures will need to meet the following criteria to be eligible to make an application to the Fund: 

  1. Your organisation is based in and working in England.
  2. You are applying for a grant of between 50,000 and 150,000.
  3.  Having considered the State Aid implications of seeking the ICRF grant the social venture is satisfied that the application, if successful, would be compliant.
  4. The proposed work is designed to prepare the social venture to raise investment of at least 500,000 (external returnable money) to develop services or win contracts of at least 1million and will be completed within 18 months.
  5. The grant requested will be used solely to fund costs associated with becoming investment and/or contract ready.
  6.  The grant requested will be used primarily to fund revenue costs, with no expenditure on capital items with a value in excess of 5,000.
  7. The proposal for which you are seeking funding is neither religious nor party political in nature (to be clear, this does not exclude faith groups).

We recommend that interested social ventures check our updates on themed calls for the fund in addition to referring to the criteria. The fund might sometimes only accept applications responding to our themed calls.

 

What can the money be spent on?

The social venture will be able to spend their grant on investment/contract readiness support and internal costs.  In relation to internal costs it is anticipated that this would be additional staffing to deliver the investment/contract readiness programme and potentially manage the relationship with the advisory support provider.

The fund does not provide working capital or general overheads.  

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Why not browse our list of over 35 approved providers to start your application process to the Investment and Contract Readiness Fund.

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