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.

Making a nomination couldn’t be easier – simply log on to www.bridgwatermercury.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, Tangier Central, Castle St, Taunton, TA1 4AS by the closing date of Sunday 11th September 2022.

Once all nominations have been received, our editor 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 per cent of all to tokens collected, it will receive 50 per cent 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.

Our beneficiaries last year were St Giles Animal Rescue and Chard Museum.

Qualifying Criteria

  • Applicants must be registered charities.
  • Applicants must not have received a grant from us within the last two years
  • Preference to be given to projects supporting those in our communities who are overlooked or under-served.

Grants will not be awarded for:

  • Salaries, professional fees or day-to-day running or maintenance costs of the charity (but this does not exclude such expenses where essential to a specific project)
  • General appeals as opposed to specific projects or items of equipment
  • Projects that do not bring benefits to our local communities
  • Political or religious objectives, or projects that discriminate in favour of particular ethnic or religious groups (but this does not exclude religious organisations offering charitable support to the sick or needy without discrimination)
  • State or privately run schools (other than special needs)
  • Hospitals (other than hospices)
  • Community Interest Companies that are not registered charities