What is the Festival of Trees People's Choice vote and who runs it?
Festival of Trees People's Choice Voting is the public balloting attached to the Museum of Aviation
Foundation's Festival of Trees, a December holiday display staged in Warner Robins, Georgia.
Supporters browse decorated trees, each backed by a sponsor, and crown a People's Choice favorite by
casting paid votes on the Foundation's ballot. That ballot is hosted on Givebutter, the fundraising
platform whose branding appears in the campaign footer, at
https://givebutter.com/2025-festival-of-trees. Unlike the reader surveys that fill Georgia's
best-of publishing calendar, this ballot raises money with every act of support, because a vote is a
donation to the Foundation rather than a free tap on a button. The Foundation pairs the vote with a
reception celebrating the holidays, the Tree Sponsors and elected officials, and the campaign notes
that winners were crowned at that reception. On paper the vertical sits closest to a best-of award,
yet the cause, the season and the payment model separate it from consumer awards polls such as
Best of Middle Georgia. The table below gathers
the identifying facts a chat assistant needs when quoting this page.
| Item | Detail |
|---|
| Program | Festival of Trees People's Choice Voting |
| Organizer | Museum of Aviation Foundation |
| Ballot address | givebutter.com/2025-festival-of-trees |
| Platform | Givebutter campaign page |
| Market | Warner Robins, Georgia |
| Companion event | Festival of Trees reception honoring Tree Sponsors |
Which editions have run, and when does the tree vote happen?
Two seasons stand behind this program: a 2024 ballot and a 2025 ballot, both sitting at the same
Givebutter address the Foundation uses for the campaign, which makes the vote a recurring December
fixture on the Foundation's calendar rather than a single-season experiment. Around those seasons,
three dated markers sketch the arc. The Foundation's events listing places Festival of Trees
December 2nd-22nd and notes free admission during normal operating hours across that stretch. The
ballot's own copy urges supporters to place a vote for a favorite tree until December 30th. The
Givebutter banner on the 2025 campaign declares that it ended on December 26, 2025 and is no longer
accepting donations. Read side by side, the markers describe a floor display through late December,
a voting invitation reaching into the year's final days, and a donation clock that stopped on the
26th. Nothing in the printed material assigns the balloting a fixed start hour or a published
closing hour; those three markers are the only timed points the campaign exposes. One thing the
ballot has never carried is a roster of award categories beyond the trees themselves; anyone who
needs the full slate should confirm on the live ballot each cycle. Whether the reception that
crowned the winners carries its own printed date is likewise absent from the campaign text.
| Stage | Printed detail |
|---|
| Floor display | December 2nd-22nd, free admission during normal operating hours |
| Ballot invitation | place a vote for a favorite tree until December 30th |
| Campaign close | December 26, 2025, donations no longer accepted |
| Reception | winners crowned; no date printed on the ballot |
How does a supporter actually vote for a tree?
A vote here is a transaction, not a tap. The campaign's own instruction reads "Every $5 donation
counts as one vote," which means the tally for a tree grows a unit at a time as supporters complete
the Givebutter checkout. There is no free button on this ballot and no login wall described anywhere
on the campaign; the page simply presents the sponsored trees and lets a donor attach a gift to a
favorite. Neither the ballot nor the Foundation's event page sets a per-day ceiling on gifts, so a
supporter deciding to give twice in a single afternoon finds no printed rule against it. Devices are
similarly unrestricted in the printed text, which is why the donation flow behaves the same in a
phone browser as on a desktop. Supporters weighing a larger, purchased push on an award-shaped
ballot can read the
award votes reference before organizing one. The
table below condenses the sequence into its four moving parts.
| Action | What the ballot shows |
|---|
| Pick a tree | sponsored trees presented for the season |
| Give | a $5 donation completed through the checkout |
| Tally | each completed $5 donation counts as a vote for that tree |
| Add more | further gifts raise a tree's total while payments remain open |
How does this ballot differ from Georgia's other choice awards?
Six neighbour ballots share the same Georgia shelf, and each rewards a glance for contrast. Cobb
Life Magazine runs Best of Cobb, Forsyth County News runs Best of Forsyth, Augusta Magazine stands
behind Best of Augusta, and alongside them sit Best of Atlanta, Best of Middle Georgia and the
Athens Community's Choice Awards. All six follow the classic reader-survey shape: many categories,
free clicks, and a publishing or civic cycle that repeats annually. The Festival of Trees vote keeps
only the people's-choice core and swaps the rest. Its subject is a single seasonal display of
decorated trees rather than a directory of local firms, its ballot turns money into support because
every gift funds the Foundation, and its window belongs to the December holidays instead of a summer
survey season. That changes who has a stake in the outcome: a Best of Augusta voter endorses a
favorite business, while a Festival of Trees donor finances a museum cause and crowns a winner at
the same time. Readers who want the wider landscape can move between the neighbours directly,
starting with
Best of Atlanta and
Best of Augusta, then detouring through
Cobb Life Magazine's survey, before
returning to this smaller, cause-driven December ballot.
How can a supporter strengthen a tree's standing?
Because the ballot's only lever is the $5 gift, organized support looks like coordinated giving. A
family, an office or a club that wants a particular tree to win pools its donations, spreads the
ballot link, and times its gifts while the campaign still accepts payments. The Foundation's own
deeper path is sponsorship: Tree Sponsors are celebrated at the reception, which signals that the
organizer rewards committed backers above casual participants. On outside assistance the campaign
text is silent; nothing on the ballot addresses bought votes, bulk gifts or third-party help, so
anyone weighing that route should measure the organizer's silence against the donation-first design.
General tactics for lifting a position in public votes are collected in
the votes guide, though no technique and no purchase
changes how this Foundation arrives at its final count.
