Newsquest’s £128K giveaway

For the second year Newsquest say they concluded the Cash For Charities campaign for 2022 by making donations totalling £128k to 80 different charities across the country, including those located in the newly acquired Norfolk and Suffolk region.

The awards are granted through the Gannett Foundation and each year it donates thousands of pounds in grants to charitable organisations for life-changing projects. Gannett is the parent company to Newsquest.

Newsquest says it invited its readers to nominate local causes they believed should benefit from the scheme – and the Cash for Charities 2022 initiative received thousands of applications.

An editorial panel considered all the nominations received and readers were invited to collect voting tokens published in the newspapers to back their choice: the more tokens collected for the respective charity, the bigger the share of cash awarded. This resulted in the initiative receiving in excess of 17k votes from readers.

The publisher added, those awarded included Greenock Medical Aid Society (GMAS) whose grant will cover the cost of setting up a health and wellbeing suite to add a holistic dimension to the care provided to residents.

Fundraising officer June McDermid says the team at GMAS are ‘absolutely delighted’ with the result.

She added: “We can't quite believe it. This funding covers the cost of the whole project and means we can push ahead with our plans. Having this extra benefit on top of the care and support that's already there will make such a difference to our residents.”

Activities development co-ordinator Diana Knox added: “We are very thankful to the Cash for Charities scheme and greatly thankful for the support we've received from the local community. This is a really exciting adventure for GMAS which will give us the opportunity to advance our care.”

Another recipient, expanded the publisher, was the local branch of Age UK, which is based in Taunton and used its share of the money to fund its volunteer-led services. The charity says that more than 33,500 people in Somerset aged 65 or over live on their own. Loneliness and isolation can be harmful to people's health.

Age UK Somerset provides company for older people across the county with its Befriending service by matching them with a volunteer for a weekly visit, exercise classes, offering advice and running a Walk and Talk service.

Phil Dolan, chief executive at Age UK Somerset, said: “With 2022 being a challenging year this Cash For Charities award could not have come at a better time.”

Newsquest brand, marketing and compliance manager Debbie Hellaby said: “As in 2021 we continue to believe that our readers are best placed to identify those charities who are most in need of our support.

“The 2022 activity also ensured that in challenging times we were able to directly support the community initiatives that mattered most to our readers, particularly those that may previously have been overlooked.

“We identified the impact that the £128k has made to the local communities via the use of the Global Goals that were adopted by the United Nations in 2015 as a universal call to action to end poverty, protect the planet, and ensure that by 2030 all people enjoy peace and prosperity.

“These goals helped us to identify that the readers chose to grant the highest percentages of the fund to support primary issues including physical health, poverty, disadvantage and debt, wellbeing, and community cohesion with targeted benefit toward children and young people, people in care or suffering serious illness or those with a disadvantaged or low income.

“It has been a privilege to be involved in this project, liaising with all the charities and witnessing first- hand the direct impact that the contribution makes in our local communities.”