Government proposes £10m Investment and Contract Readiness Fund

On Monday the Minister for Civil Society Nick Hurd released an open letter to the sector on the future of commissioning public services.  It announced a £10m fund to support charities and social enterprises improve their chances of winning investment and public service contracts - the Investment and Contract Readiness Fund. 

The fund reflects the increasing trend of charities and social enterprises taking on public service delivery, and the need for such organisations to have the skills and knowledge to be able to do so successfully. 

Paul Cheng, Head of CAF Venturesome commented “Investment readiness is a problem for many charities and social enterprises and it’s crucial that this is addressed if the Big Society Bank is to achieve its aims in bringing new capital into the charity sector.

“From our experience of offering loans through Venturesome we know that many organisations are lacking the basic financial literacy, management and strategy to be investment ready.  While the announcement of this fund is welcome, there also needs to be a wider debate on what ‘investment readiness’ actually looks like and means across the sector. 

“Furthermore, the Government’s own plans for public service reform place a strong emphasis on charities and social enterprises delivering services, and if this is going to work there will be thousands of charities that will need help to take advantage of these new opportunities.  In this contexdt, it is not clear how far £10m will really go.”

To read the paper in full, you can download it here.