We’re giving charities in the town the chance to take home a share of £128,000 – a donation from our parent company’s charitable arm The Gannett Foundation.

There’s a £16,000 pot of cash for charities in our area and we need you to decide where this year’s money should be spent.

Last year, The Joshua Tree in Sandiway, was awarded a grant of £734.98 to support families affected by childhood cancer.

They were the town’s chosen charity for 2021 and readers were asked to collect tokens printed inside the Northwich Guardian and hand them in at collection points around the area.

The more tokens that were given in for the charity, the bigger the share of the region’s pot of cash was awarded to them.

The Joshua Tree was given the money at Christmas and since then, they have been inundated with referrals.

The Joshua Tree helps families affected by childhood cancer

Pippa Watson-Peck, communications and fundraising manager, said: “In the last six months, we have received approximately 40 family referrals, which is around 15 in a normal 12-month period.

“The funding from The Gannett Foundation has helped support these families with therapeutic interventions such as 1:1 counselling, peer support, educational engagement with schools, holiday club entertainment and use of purpose built support centre in Sandiway.”

The Joshua Tree received just over £700 last year

Following on from last year’s success, we’re asking readers to nominate their favourite Northwich charities to be considered for a 2022 grant.

Making a nomination couldn’t be easier – simply log on to northwichguardian.co.uk/readerschoice and fill in your nomination form, click on the link at the bottom of the article 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, Newsquest Media Group Ltd, Deeside Print Centre, Zone 3, 10th Avenue, Deeside Industrial Estate, Flintshire, CH5 2UA by the closing date of Sunday, September 11, 2022.

Once all nominations have been received, our Guardian team will select ten of the most popular 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!

Anyone may nominate a charity, including a representative of the charity itself, but please make sure you provide contact details for the nominated charity and a brief but clear explanation of how the money would be spent, for example a specific project or item of equipment, and how it will benefit the community.

For more information read the terms and conditions below and see our website for further details.

Terms and Conditions:

Newsquest terms and conditions will apply where relevant to the grants process; please visit 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: 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.