2025 "SWEET THINGS" Pin Up Paws Calendar Contest: How Voting Works & How to Win

What the SWEET THINGS Pin Up Paws Calendar Contest is

The 2025 "SWEET THINGS" Pin Up Paws Calendar Contest is a fundraiser built around pet photos and public votes, run by the St. Augustine Humane Society, an animal welfare organization headquartered at 1665 Old Moultrie Road, St. Augustine, Florida 32084. The program asks pet owners a simple question on its ballot: is your pet the sweetest of them all? Owners enter a photo of their dog, cat or other companion animal, then rally friends, family and local supporters to vote the entry up. The votes decide which pets appear in the society's printed "SWEET THINGS" pin-up style calendar for the following year.

The ballot itself is hosted on GoGo Photo Contest, whose address for this program is gogophotocontest.com/pupcalendar25, a platform that specializes in photo-based fundraiser contests for nonprofits. Navigation on the ballot covers Participate, View Entries, Sponsorships, the PUP Sweet Things Party, Contest Rules and Prizes, so a visitor can move between entering, browsing and reading the terms without leaving the host page.

Because the program doubles as a fundraiser, the standing structure rewards sustained support rather than a single late surge. The contestant holding the most votes when the contest closes takes first place, and the top thirteen fundraisers win a coveted spot in the calendar. Questions about the calendar or the contest go to Carolyn Smith at [email protected].

The dated record of the Pin Up Paws editions

Confirmed editions of the Pin Up Paws fundraiser ran in 2024 and 2025, making it a recurring fixture on the St. Augustine Humane Society's calendar. The 2025 title refers to the calendar the votes produce, and the printed deadlines shown on the ballot belong to the round that built that calendar. The entry window closed at 8:00 PM Eastern Time on Tuesday, July 16, 2024, and the vote window closed one day later, at 8:00 PM Eastern Time on Wednesday, July 17, 2024. That compressed two-day span between the entry cutoff and the final vote deadline is the defining timing fact of this ballot: supporters who wait until the last evening have very little room to act.

The organizer prints the category structure for the ballot nowhere in the material at hand, and the day-level open date of the voting window is equally absent, so both should be confirmed on the live ballot each cycle.

What the ballot leaves out matters just as much to a contestant. Alongside the printed deadlines there is no published per-supporter vote limit, no eligibility fine print and no schedule for the next calendar round. Since the society has now run the fundraiser in consecutive years, another edition is the natural expectation, but no organizer statement fixes its dates, and the ballot page currently reads "Contest has ended." The society's own channels and the same GoGo Photo Contest address are where the next round will surface first.

How a supporter votes on this ballot today

Backing a pet in the Pin Up Paws contest happens entirely inside the GoGo Photo Contest ballot the society publishes at gogophotocontest.com/pupcalendar25. The literal sequence is short. Open the ballot, choose View Entries to browse the gallery of competing pets, click through to the entry you favor, and press the vote button on that entry's page. The platform's Sign In control sits in the navigation for supporters who also want to enter their own animal or manage an existing entry, but browsing and voting the gallery is the core action.

Timing is the constraint that shapes everything. The printed rules gave contestants until 8:00 PM Eastern Time on Tuesday, July 16, 2024 to enter, and gave every voter until 8:00 PM Eastern Time on Wednesday, July 17, 2024 to submit votes. In practice that means the entry you want to back must already be in the gallery before the final day, and your vote must land before the Wednesday evening cutoff. An entry's standing as a fundraiser is visible on the ballot while the round runs, which lets a supporter see whether the pet they favor is inside the top thirteen.

Because the contest has ended for the round now shown, the ballot displays its closed state. When the society opens the next calendar competition at the same address, the same gallery, vote button and rules tabs return, so the mechanic above carries over unchanged apart from the dates.

Where this ballot sits among Florida's public-vote programs

The Pin Up Paws contest is unusual among Florida public-vote programs because it is run by a single nonprofit for its own fundraising, rather than by a media publisher ranking local businesses. Its nearest neighbors on this site are the state's best-of polls: the Best of Florida Awards covering the whole state, the Best of Miami Readers' Poll, the Best of Orlando readers' choice poll, the Best of Tallahassee ballot, Best of the Bay, and Best in Destin. Every one of those polls answers to a separate publisher and covers businesses or venues; the Pin Up Paws ballot covers pets and channels every vote into the humane society's mission.

The difference shows up in three practical ways. First, the entities competing are individual pets with personal stories, so supporter appeals run on emotional connection rather than on customer loyalty. Second, the fundraiser structure means the standings reflect money raised as well as raw votes, making the top thirteen cutoff the number that matters most for a calendar spot. Third, the voting window is dramatically shorter than a seasonal readers' poll, concentrating all supporter energy into the final stretch before the 8:00 PM Eastern Time close.

For a St. Augustine supporter, that makes this ballot a concentrated sprint, while the state's best-of polls reward weeks of steady outreach.

Strengthening support in a short-window pet fundraiser

The shape of this ballot dictates the shape of a good support push. With the entry cutoff at 8:00 PM Eastern Time on Tuesday, July 16, 2024, and the vote cutoff the very next evening, a contestant who waits for the final day has almost no time to convert casual interest into votes. The useful work happens earlier: get the pet's entry submitted well before the Tuesday deadline, share the direct entry link rather than the general ballot address, and ask supporters to vote as soon as they see the post, since a vote promised for later frequently never lands.

Remember the fundraiser dimension. The top thirteen fundraisers earn the calendar spot, so contestants focused on winning should treat early momentum as the goal and watch the standings on the ballot rather than guessing at their position. Keep every appeal inside the organizer's printed rules on the GoGo Photo Contest page, because the St. Augustine Humane Society, not any outside helper, decides what support counts and can act on entries that break its terms. General tactics for widening a supporter base are covered in our votes guide, and background on paid vote packages for award-style ballots sits at our award votes page.