FLCAJ Readers' Choice Awards (Florida Community Association Journal): How Voting Works & How to Win

What Are the FLCAJ Readers' Choice Awards and Who Runs Them?

The FLCAJ Readers' Choice Awards is the annual reader recognition program of Florida Community Association Journal, which publishes under the FCAP Group banner. Unlike consumer favorites contests, this ballot speaks to a professional audience: the landing page greets community managers and board members directly and asks them to recognize their service partners. Those partners are companies, and the ballot sorts them by trade; the current voting pages show lineups under Asphalt and Paving Surfaces and under Concrete, Balcony, Railing or Carport work.

Where the ballot lives

Voting happens on the organizer's own website. The form sits at fcapgroup.com under the readerschoice path, with the working entry point at the Vote_start.cfm page and a standing hub at the plain readerschoice address. No outside polling platform is involved; FCAP Group hosts the whole thing itself, which means every rule, deadline and nominee list a reader needs is carried on the publisher's domain rather than scattered across a third party.

Item	Detail
Organizer	Florida Community Association Journal (FCAP Group)
Ballot home	Organizer's own site, fcapgroup.com/readerschoice
Market	Statewide Florida
Voters	Community managers and board members
Recognition type	Service partners of community associations

Category	Nominees shown on the ballot
Asphalt and Paving Surfaces	Asphalt Restoration Technology Systems, Inc.
Concrete, Balcony, Railing or Carport	Carousel Development & Restoration, Inc.; CBR Fabricators; Daniello Companies; Keystone Engineering and Consulting, Inc.; Mullet's Aluminum Products, Inc.

When Did the Ballot Run and What Do Past Results Show?

The program's press materials trace it back to 2014, when the debut edition ended with 37 award recipients. Florida Community Association Journal has kept the format running on an annual footing ever since, and 2025 together with 2026 are the cycles whose live ballots sit on the voting site today. The fullest published breakdown belongs to the 2021 edition. Voting took place from September 1 through December 31, 2021, and the aftermath summary reports more than 240 nominations, 10,173 votes cast and 208 service providers recognized as winners. The current cycle is running bigger: the ballot page states that this year more than 13,000 votes were cast by FLCAJ readers. On timing, the present ballot opened in late August 2026 and the printed deadline reads December 31, 2026, which keeps the program on the same September-to-December rhythm the 2021 edition followed. Windows for the years between 2014 and 2021 are likewise absent from the material FCAP Group publishes openly, so the timeline below mixes confirmed results with the gaps.

Cycle	Window	Reported outcome
2014	Debut year	37 award recipients
2021	September 1 to December 31	More than 240 nominations, 10,173 votes, 208 winners
2025	Not republished	Confirmed edition on the voting site
2026	Live since late August	More than 13,000 reader votes reported

How Does a Reader Cast a Vote on the FLCAJ Ballot?

Voting starts at the category level. A reader opens the ballot entry page, picks a trade from the prompt reading "Please chose a category", and lands on a lineup of nominated companies for that field of work. The control on that category page files the choice, and a companion link offers "a list of all nominees" for anyone who prefers to browse every trade before settling on a pick. Two secondary paths widen participation. Every category carries a fallback route captioned "Vote in This Category or Click Here to Nominate a Company Not Listed Above", so a supporter whose vendor is missing from the lineup can put the firm into the race directly. That nomination route matters for newer companies that have never appeared on a prior ballot, since it gives them a way in without waiting on the organizer.

What the ballot leaves unsaid

Cadence is the blank spot. The voting pages carry no printed per-reader limit and no instruction about coming back on later days, so a supporter planning repeat visits has nothing official to work from. Whether the form asks for identifying details at submission is likewise not addressed on the pages holding the ballot, which leaves the practical experience to be discovered on the form itself.

How Does This Ballot Sit Beside Other Florida Reader Votes?

Within the Florida contest listings, the FLCAJ ballot shares space with several reader-driven programs: the Best of Florida Awards, the Best of Miami Readers' Poll, Best of Orlando, Best of Tallahassee, Best of the Bay and the 2024 "BEST BUDS" Pin Up Paws Calendar Contest. Most of those names aim at a broad consumer readership choosing hometown favorites; the FLCAJ program aims at a trade readership choosing vendors.

What makes this ballot different

Three traits separate it. The voters are professionals, the community managers and board members who sign vendor contracts, so a win carries weight in procurement conversations rather than in casual bragging rights. The nominees are businesses organized by service trade, from paving contractors to structural restoration firms, instead of restaurants, shops or pets. And the whole apparatus is self-hosted by the publisher, keeping the ballot, the nominee rosters and the results inside the FCAP Group domain rather than on an external polling service. For a service company weighing where to invest outreach during awards season, that profile argues for treating this ballot as a client-relations exercise aimed at Florida's association-management community, distinct from the mass-market pushes the city reader polls reward.

How Can a Service Company Strengthen Its Support in the Vote?

Support in this ballot comes from a narrow, identifiable audience: the community managers and board members who read Florida Community Association Journal. That shapes what outreach can realistically achieve. A vendor's strongest moves are telling current clients the ballot is open, handing them the direct path to the company's category so a busy manager arrives at the right lineup without hunting, and using the nomination route whenever the firm has not yet been listed. The ballot page itself prints no statement about third-party voting assistance, so companies weighing outside help have no organizer guidance to consult and should judge the tradeoffs themselves. Broader tactics for reader ballots, from reminder timing to messaging that respects a professional audience, are collected in our votes guide.