Invitation to Tender - The Reach Fund (Grant Administration Services for Investment Readiness Grants)

Access - The Foundation for Social Investment are seeking a partner to deliver grant administration services for "The Reach Fund", our investment readiness grant programme for charities and social enterprise in England.

Access was set up in 2015 by the UK Government, Big Lottery Fund and Big Society Capital.

2 / 5 Access works to make charities and social enterprises in England more financially resilient and self-reliant, so that they can sustain or increase their impact.

We do this through supporting the development of enterprise activity to grow and diversify income, and improving access to the social investment which can help stimulate that enterprise activity.

In 2016 Access established the Reach Fund to test a new model of providing investment readiness support to charities and social enterprises.

Following the successful piloting of the fund over the last two years, Access wishes to contract a provider to deliver the Reach Fund for at least a further three years, from 13/10/2018.

We are looking to work with an experienced grant administrator who will be comfortable with the iterative nature of delivering this programme, with the ability to learn and adapt as the programme progresses.

We plan to support this programme for at least a further three years, with a possible extension of up to two more.

Given the programme is already in place with 23 Access Points appointed to date, we do not expect a significant build up period will be required so would expect broadly even volumes of applications over the next three years.We expect the average investment readiness grant made to charities and social enterprises to be £15k and we expect 480 organisations over 3 years to benefit.

This results in a total expected grant spend of £7.2m over three years.

If the programme is extended for a further 2 years, we would expect a further grant spend of up to £5m.

We ask prospective grant administrators to estimate the costs of delivering a programme with the above quoted grant volumes.

The tenderer should evidence the ability to: a) Manage the relationship with the current Access points and maintaining the application process for new Access Points b) Establish and maintain positive relationships with each of the Access points c) Show why they are well placed to manage these relationships d) Maintain the website to manage the online diagnostic and grant application process for charities and social enterprises working with their Access points e) Manage the grant application, scoring, decision making, payment and grant monitoring processes f) Manage any issues related to State Aid g) Monitor the grants made to charities and social enterprises h) Gather, report and publish data from the fund's activities in coordination with Access i) Solicit and respond to feedback from lenders, grant recipients and support providers and work with Access to refine the programme Further detail as well as the award criteria are included in the ITT available on our website