News
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Applying after September 2014
The fund is currently not accepting applications for grants or providers and further updates will be provided in the coming months.
Restrictions on applications
From 3 July 2014, only health and social care organisations can apply for an ICRF grant.
We are interested in supporting new opportunities emerging locally through the 3.8bn Better Care Fund. The intention of the fund is to reduce pressure on social care and hospitals by providing intervention before a crisis.
We will also fund bids from ventures seeking other opportunities across the health and social care sectors, as long as there is a market opportunity to raise investment or win contracts. We are particularly interested in organisations providing preventative services that minimise long-term costs to the health service.
Health and social care organisations can apply for an ICRF grant to win public service contracts valued at 500,000 or more or to secure investment of 500,000 or more.
Fund re-opens
From October 2013, the Fund will accept applications from all social ventures.
The Fund is running a themed call out for mutual and arts ventures. There is a panel considering only mutuals in December 2013 and a panel that will focus on arts ventures in January.
Themed call for arts ventures
To support the new Arts Ventures Fund, Investing for Good, Social Investment Business and the Cabinet Office have designed a tailored programme of investment readiness support for arts ventures within the already successful Investment and Contract Readiness Fund.
Fund reopens for mutuals
The Investment and Contract Readiness Fund has reopened for mutuals, and applications will be reviewed in December 2013. The fund will fully reopen in January 2014.
Themed calls for application
From May 2013, we will prioritise applications from organisations delivering services to support specific Government policy areas and are looking for contract readiness support to help them compete for public service delivery contracts.
We are now inviting applications from already spun out mutuals and organisations delivring rehabilitation services.
Find out more about our themed calls
Repayable awards
From April 2013, all investment readiness awards over 75,000 will be subject to repayment clauses.
Investments
The Investment and Contract Readiness Fund has pledged over 3.8 million to 40 social ventures to help them scale up and do more for society. The grants will allow them to buy the top quality specialist support that will make them more attractive to investors and commissioners, and which they hope will enable them to raise 173 million in further investments and contracts.
Increased capacity to meet demand
The Fund has now over 23 approved providers ready to talk to ambitious social ventures about their investment and contract readiness plans.
Interest in the Fund
We know there is huge interest in the Fund, but we want to remind people it is not a race. It is a fund which runs across three financial years, accepting applications on a rolling basis. We expect to add more and more providers as they become approved.
The current providers have received enormous interest over the last couple of weeks with one provider receiving more inquiries in the first 24 hours than they have the capacity to work with in a year.
Most providers expect to be able to work with between 6 and 12 ventures at any one time. If our current approved providers do not have the capacity to take on all interested ventures right now, that will change as the provider pool expands and the Investor Panel make more and more awards.
Raising future investment
Just remember though, any venture applying to the Fund must have a clear and realistic case for wanting to raise at least 500,000 in investment or secure service contracts of 1 million or more.
In addition, providers are likely to ask for some key information from interested ventures including a clear picture of your activities, what your investment or contract plans are some basic business information before they will be able to consider working with a venture.
Learning together
As the Fund is not designed quite like other funds we are learning as it develops and grows. Specifically, we have planned a prototyping period until the end of July to test and trial through practice. That means the Fund will be closed to applications in August and will re-open with (any) amendments in September.