My Furry Valentine Photo Contest: How Voting Works & How to Win

What the My Furry Valentine Photo Contest is and who runs it

The My Furry Valentine Photo Contest is a fundraiser ballot, not a business ranking. It is run by Friends of Indianapolis Dogs Outside, the Indianapolis nonprofit usually shortened to FIDO, whose core mission is to find alternatives to continuous chaining of dogs. The organization's own framing is that its clients want the best for their dogs but sometimes need a little help, and the contest exists to raise the money that provides that help.

The ballot lives on the GoGo Photo Contest site at gogophotocontest.com/fido, which is where entries, rules and voting all sit. FIDO's mailing address is PO Box 30069, Indianapolis, IN 46230, and the organization states plainly that while it values all members of its community, it cannot be responsible for or provide technical support for individuals who run into difficulties submitting stories or voting.

The money side is concrete. The stated 2026 goal was $15,000, which FIDO said would help fund nearly 40 fence projects in 2026. That is the purpose every vote feeds: a fence project keeps a dog off a chain, and the photo contest is how the organization crowds in the funding. The winning entry earns a feature, since the top photo and its story will appear in the organizer's Spring newsletter.

The dated record for the FIDO photo contest

The program traces its inception to 2012, when My Furry Valentine began and grew into what the organizer describes as a major animal adoption event. Confirmed editions on this ballot are 2025 and 2026, enough to establish the contest as an annual fundraiser rather than a one-off campaign. The next cycle would be 2027, but nothing about its dates has been printed ahead of time.

Within each cycle, the voting phase runs from March through May. The timing is tied to the prize: the photo and story that finish on top are featured in FIDO's Spring newsletter, so the ballot closes in time for that publication. The contest clock runs on Eastern Time, which matters for anyone voting close to the deadline from outside the Eastern zone.

The 2026 edition has already ended, and the ballot page says so directly. That means a supporter arriving today is looking at a closed cycle, not a live one, and the practical step is to watch for the next window rather than hunting for a vote control that is no longer counting.

FIDO has not published the day-level open and close pair for any given cycle; confirm on the live ballot each cycle.

How a supporter votes in the My Furry Valentine contest

Supporters vote directly on the GoGo Photo Contest ballot. Opening gogophotocontest.com/fido and choosing View Entries brings up the photos, and each entry competes inside its own category rather than against every dog on the page. Each entry pairs the photo with the owner's story, which is why the contest reads as a fundraiser first and a beauty contest second.

FIDO's printed rule allows each person a single vote per day. That single sentence shapes everything a supporter does: the way to move a photo up the board is to come back on separate days, not to repeat the action in one sitting. A household that votes daily across the March through May window contributes far more to an entry than a one-time burst, and the rule makes that the intended behavior rather than a workaround.

A Sign In link appears on the ballot page, and the platform may ask for it before a vote counts. FIDO's own disclaimer is worth reading before you start: the organization values its community but cannot be responsible for, or provide technical support for, individuals who have technical difficulties when submitting stories or voting. In practice that means a supporter should sort out any sign-in or browser issue with the platform, because the organizer will not troubleshoot it.

Because the clock runs on Eastern Time, a vote cast late in the day from the Central part of Indiana can land on a different contest day than the supporter assumes, which matters under a daily rule.

How this ballot sits beside its Indiana neighbours

Most Indiana public-vote ballots are best-of programs, and the My Furry Valentine Photo Contest is the odd one out. The statewide Best of Indiana ballot ranks businesses and services, and the CommunityVotes family runs city-level editions in Bloomington, Evansville, Fort Wayne and South Bend through YourChoiceAwards. The Best of Elkhart County ballot covers a county readership in the north of the state.

What separates the FIDO contest from all of those is its subject and its purpose. The best-of ballots rank local businesses under category headings; this contest ranks photographs of individual dogs, and the proceeds fund fence projects that get dogs off chains. A vote here is a donation-adjacent act for an Indianapolis nonprofit, not a recommendation of a plumber or a restaurant.

The mechanics differ too. The best-of programs typically run a nomination phase before voting opens, while the FIDO ballot is an entry contest where owners submit photos and stories directly. Its window also sits in spring, from March through May, timed to the Spring newsletter feature, whereas readers-choice ballots often cluster around a different part of the calendar. A supporter can hold standing in several of these programs at once without any of them conflicting, since each answers to its own organizer and its own rules page.

Strengthening support for a FIDO entry without breaking the rules

The daily cap makes consistency the whole game. An owner who wants a photo to finish on top should build a daily rhythm: a short reminder to the same circle of friends each morning, a link posted where the dog's story is already known, and a final push in the last week of the March through May window when casual supporters are deciding. The story attached to each entry is the best persuasion tool on the ballot, so lead with the dog's situation rather than the ask.

FIDO prints no guidance inviting outside vote services, and the organizer's stated posture is that technical and procedural matters belong to the platform, not to the nonprofit. The organizer has not published a position on purchased support either way, which is a gap worth weighing before spending money on a charity ballot. The safest reading of any ballot with a daily cap is that support which respects the cap is welcome and support that floods past it is not.

For a fuller picture of what works on public-vote ballots like this one, read our guide to getting more votes online, and check our award-votes page if you are comparing this contest with business best-of programs.