Charities in England and Wales can apply for unrestricted grants of £50,000 from the Lloyds Bank Foundation.
The foundation said it would award a total of £9.5m this year to 190 small and local charities with annual incomes of between £25,000 and £1m.
The fund, which opens today, is aimed at charities working to tackle one of 11 complex social issues, including homelessness, trafficking and domestic abuse.
The funding will be open all year, meaning charities can apply at a time that suits them and will not be restricted by deadlines.
Alongside the unrestricted funding, successful charities will be supported by one of the foundation’s regional managers, who will work with them to access a range of support to help meet their identified needs.
LBF said that at least 25 per cent of all its funding this year would be allocated to charities led by and for members of black, Asian, and minority ethnic communities.
A separate funding strand for charities specifically working on racial equity will also open in the coming months.
The foundation said it wanted to be open and transparent with charities by making clear in advance which charities and areas it was more likely to fund at any given time. But that means not all charities will be eligible to apply in all areas.
As a result, LBF said it had introduced regional priorities that will consider local need, the prevalence of eligible small and medium-sized charities, the nature of the region and the level of investment it has given to each complex social issue in that area, including its portfolio of live grants.
Paul Streets, chief executive of Lloyds Bank Foundation for England and Wales, said: “Even though we can now see a path out of the pandemic, locally rooted charities need long-term support to help left-behind communities recover.
He said 38 per cent of the foundation’s Covid-19 recovery grants were awarded to charities led by and for minoritised groups last year.
Streets said the foundation remained committed to ring-fencing at least one-quarter of its funding to help overcome structural inequalities in sector funding.
For more information and to apply, click here.