Yorkshire Building Society Charitable Foundation has hit a milestone and is celebrating reaching a record £5million shared between more than 15,000 charities across the UK with an amazing £11,100 donated to charities in Tenby.

Since the Charitable Foundation was created in 1999 it has been a large source of all charitable giving made by Yorkshire Building Society's Tenby branch on Tudor Square. In the past 12 months charities such as Jameston Community Association and RNLI Tenby have all received a donation from Yorkshire Building Society Charitable Foundation - helping to contribute to reaching the £5million milestone.

More than half of the £5million donated to charities by the Charitable Foundation was raised through an innovative scheme created by Yorkshire Building Society called 'Small Change Big Difference'. The scheme allows members to donate pence interest (maximum 99p per account per year) from their savings or mortgage account to the Charitable Foundation.

Borrowers and savers with the Society are encouraged to nominate causes to receive support from the Charitable Foundation with currently 90% of applications for funding being referred by members. The rest of the applications come directly from the charities themselves.

As well as the individual charities supported in Tenby, the Charitable Foundation has also run an annual appeal for a specific charity every year with the team at the Tudor Square branch organising fundraising activities to make their contribution. With support from staff and members of the branch the Charitable Foundation has regularly made donations of more than £50,000 to a national charity -with the most recent being the RNLI in 2012.

Sian Rees, manager of Yorkshire Building Society's Tenby branch, said: "We are absolutely delighted that Yorkshire Building Society Charitable Foundation, thanks to the support of members of the public in Tenby, has managed to reach this £5million milestone.

"We are especially pleased to see that a fantastic £11,100 has been donated to charities in our locality which has benefited so many people within our community.

"As a mutual we consider it to be vitally important to provide support to the charities that bring so much to the communities where our staff and members live and work. Through Yorkshire Building Society Charitable Foundation we will continue to do what we can, with our members support, to help our local charities in these difficult economic times."