PAWS New England Calendar Contest: How Voting Works & How to Win

What is the PAWS New England Calendar Contest, and who is behind it?

The PAWS New England Calendar Contest is a fundraising photo ballot whose payoff is a printed product: the animals that collect the most support see their photos featured in the PAWS New England 2025 Calendar. It is organized by PAWS New England, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit dog rescue whose correspondence address is PO Box 542, Ashland, MA 01721. The 2025 ballot carried the title 2025 PAWS New England Calendar Contest with the line Fundraiser for Paws New England beneath it, so money raised around the contest flows back into the rescue's work.

Entry is far broader than the rescue's dog focus suggests. The ballot states plainly that animals do not need to have been adopted from PAWS New England to take part: while PAWS New England is a dog rescue, cats, goats, chickens and lizards, in fact any animals, are welcome. A supporter's competitive field therefore spans several species, and a campaign can be built around a cat, a goat or a lizard as readily as around a dog. That openness also widens who enters, since families with any well-photographed pet can throw an animal into the ring.

The 2025 prize list even reached outside the ballot's own imagery. One prize had been generously donated by Dana Semmel, listed as available after Labor Day 2024 through June 2025, with a maximum capacity of eight people.

Which editions of the PAWS New England calendar vote have run, and when?

Confirmed editions of the contest ran in 2022, 2024 and 2025. The most recent of them, the 2025 PAWS New England Calendar Contest, has ended: its voting window sat in June 2025, and the contest page now carries an ended notice rather than an open vote.

Several details of the cycle go unstated in the organizer's published material. Day-level opening and closing dates never appear, only the month; the ballot shows no category list; the rules print nothing on vote caps, one-per-day limits or eligibility; and the round dates attached to the balloting platform are absent as well. Anyone timing an entry or a promotion around the next edition should confirm on the live ballot each cycle.

Reading the gap year

The confirmed list skips 2023, so the contest's rhythm has not been perfectly yearly in practice. Treat each cycle as its own event rather than assuming a fixed season, and check the rescue's pages before planning a campaign around a presumed start.

How does a supporter actually vote in the PAWS New England Calendar Contest?

The vote happens on the contest page itself. Its navigation runs Participate, View Entries, Rules, About and Sign In, so the working path is straightforward: open the ballot while a cycle is live, browse the View Entries listing until you find the animal you want to back, open that entry and cast your vote for it. Nothing on the page describes a purchase step inside the vote; the fundraising sits around the contest as a whole rather than gating the ballot.

The stakes come from the prize ladder. The leading entry earns the Top Dog honor, the fifth through twelfth placements each get their winning photo featured in the PAWS New England 2025 Calendar, and every entry that reaches 100 votes or more receives an additional prize from the ballot's list. Those thresholds give a supporter's effort a visible target: a hundred votes moves an entry into prize territory even if it never reaches the top of the standings.

Voting today

Because the 2025 window has closed, these steps describe what a supporter does when the next cycle opens rather than right now. The Rules link in the same navigation is where any cap or cadence would be printed once a fresh ballot goes up, so a serious backer should read it before scheduling returns.

How does this pet ballot differ from Massachusetts' best-of reader contests?

Massachusetts already hosts a wide slate of public votes, and the sibling pages to this one show the range: Best of Boston, Best of Boston (Boston Magazine), Best of Cape Cod, the Central Mass Community Choice Awards, BOSS - Best of South Shore and Boston.com Readers Say. Those ballots are reader awards tied to publishers and regions, spread across restaurants, shops, services and local institutions.

The PAWS New England Calendar Contest plays a different game. It belongs to a single charity rather than a media outlet, its entries are animals rather than businesses, and its outcome is a physical product, the rescue's printed calendar, rather than a badge or a list placement. For a supporter that changes the shape of a campaign: the audience is animal lovers reachable through rescue and pet communities, and the hook is a particular creature's story rather than civic pride in a favorite restaurant or plumber.

How can an entry's backers grow its vote count in this contest?

Support for a calendar entry comes down to reach and timing. Enter early in the window so the photo accumulates votes across the full run instead of a last-week sprint. Share the entry's own page rather than the contest homepage, so every click lands exactly where the vote is cast. Lead with the animal's story, because rescue and pet groups respond strongly to a named creature with a history, and a photograph paired with a narrative travels further than a bare link.

The natural rooms for that appeal are the rescue community around PAWS New England, local social groups and neighborhood channels where pet owners already gather. The organizer has published no guidance either encouraging or restricting outside promotional help, so keep any push within whatever the Rules tab prints for the live cycle. For technique that applies across public ballots of every stripe, see how to get more votes online.