There is still time to nominate a charity in south Essex to win a share of a whopping £125k cash giveaway.

Our parent company’s charitable arm, The Gannett Foundation, is providing £125k in cash to support local charities across the country and we are delighted to have a £20k share to give away in our area.

And we want YOU to decide where this money should be spent.

We’re asking readers to nominate their favourite local charities to be considered for a grant.

Making a nomination couldn’t be easier – simply log-on to www.echo-news.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, Echo House, Howard Chase, Basildon, Essex, SS14 3BE, by the closing date of Sunday October 3, 2021.

Once all nominations have been received, our editor will select eight 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 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 to tokens collected, it will receive 50 per cent of the £20,000!

Terms and conditions

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 8 charities chosen by the local editorial panel will be voted for by our readers. The value of the grant awarded to each of the 8 charities will be calculated pro rata according to their share of the vote. Only original voting coupons will be accepted, no photocopies. The 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 8 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.