CHARITABLE groups in York and surrounding areas are in with the chance of winning a share of a whopping £125,000 cash giveaway as part of a new grant scheme.

Starting today (September 6), The Press’ parent company’s charitable arm, The Gannett Foundation, is providing £125,000 to support local charities across the country - and we are delighted to have an £25,000 share to give away in our local area.

We’re asking readers to nominate their favourite local charities to be considered for a grant - as we want you to decide how the funding should be spent.

Any person may nominate a charity, including a representative of the charity itself, but they should always give contact details for a representative of the nominated charity and a brief but clear explanation of how the money will be spent - such as a specific project or item of equipment, and how it will benefit the community.

Making a nomination couldn’t be easier – simply log-on to yorkpress.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.

Write to us with the details at: Readers’ Choice Cash For Charity Nominations, 84-86 Walmgate, York, North Yorkshire, YO1 9YN by the closing date of Sunday, October 3, 2021.

Once all nominations have been received, we will select eight of the most popular local charities to be featured in this year’s grants scheme.

York Press: Readers' choice logo

We’re then going to put the power to allocate the cash back into the hands of our readers – 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 per cent of all the tokens collected, it will receive 50 per cent of the funding.

Entries must be registered charities and must not have received a grant from the scheme within the last two years.

Grants will not be awarded for payments such as salaries, professional fees or day-to-day running or maintenance costs or projects that do not bring benefits to local communities.

Grants have been awarded in the past to York charities including Holgate Windmill, which used the money to buy equipment enabling it to produce flour, Citizens Advice York and The Regen Centre, a charity in Riccall which used the funding for its ‘Changing Places’ project - adapting one of its changing rooms at its community centre for people with disabilities.