We are giving local charities the chance to take a share in a massive £16k giveaway.

It could be that you volunteer or work for a charity, or you may just want to support your favourite local charity by nominating it for a share of the £16,000 cash we’re making available to support great local courses.

Last year Cumbria Wildlife Trust and Cumbria's Jigsaw Children's Hospice got your vote.

This year making a nomination couldn’t be easier – simply log-on to www.newsandstar.co.uk/readerschoice and fill in your nomination form or you can write to us, confirming the name and address of the charity you’d like to nominate and why to: Readers’ Choice Cash For Charity Nominations, Fleet House, Hampshire Road, Weymouth, DT4 9XD by the closing date of Sunday 11th September 2022

Once all nominations have been received, our Regional Group Editor Vanessa Sims, will select ten of the most deserving local charities to be featured in this year’s grants scheme.

We’re then going to put the power to allocate the cash back into your hands – for four weeks, readers will be invited to collect tokens from our newspapers which can then be sent to collection points across our region or posted. Each token collected will then be used to allocate cash to the nominated charity – so if your favourite charity collects 50% of all to tokens collected, it will receive 50% of the £16,000!

The £16,000 cash is being provided by our parent company’s charitable arm: The Gannett Foundation.

This year the Gannett Foundation will donate £128,000 to charities across the country.

Newsquest terms and conditions will apply where relevant to the grants process; please visit http://www.newsquest.co.uk/prize-competition-rules. Personal data will be used by Newsquest and its agents solely for the administration of the grants process and will not be shared with any third party; our general privacy notice is at: http://www.newsquest.co.uk/privacy-policy. This campaign will be published in multiple Newsquest publications across this Newsquest region.

The 10 charities chosen by the local editorial panel will be voted for by our readers.

The value of the grant awarded to each of the 10 charities will be calculated pro rata according to their share of the vote. Only original voting coupons will be accepted, no photocopies. The cash grants will be sent by BACS transfer.

Grants are conditional on completion of the relevant project and a successful nominee charity may be required to evidence its use of the grant. The top 10 charities selected for the vote will be contacted to provide additional information for entry into the readers’ vote; should this information not be provided within the timescale provided then the editorial panel will select an alternative charity.

The charity must be registered with the Charities Commission and have not received a grant from the Gannett Foundation in the last two years.

To nominate click here.