Face of the Alliance Calendar Contest: How Voting Works & How to Win

What is the Face of the Alliance Calendar Contest and who runs it?

The Face of the Alliance Calendar Contest is a pet photo fundraiser staged by the Missouri Alliance for Animal Legislation, a Missouri organization with its mailing address at P.O. Box 4309, St. Louis, MO 63123. The Alliance describes itself as the only organization devoted exclusively to fighting for stronger animal welfare laws at the Missouri Capitol, and it has carried that role since 1990. Its fundraiser ballot carries the title 2026 Face of the Alliance and sits on the organization's own contest site at gogophotocontest.com/maal.

The page greets visitors with a short set of tabs, Participate, View Entries, Rules and Sign In, above a notice that the most recent round has ended. Supporters vote for their favorite pet, and the winning animal goes on to represent the Alliance throughout the year that follows, appearing on the organization's banner beside earlier champions. The ballot announces itself plainly as a fundraiser for the Missouri Alliance for Animal Legislation, so the money gathered through voting flows straight back into the Alliance's legislative mission.

That purpose makes this contest a different creature from the reader's-choice rankings that fill Missouri's public-vote calendar. The nominees here are pets, the outcome is a calendar face plus a year of advocacy duty, and the votes themselves carry a price rather than costing nothing.

When has the calendar contest run, and when does voting happen?

The Alliance initiated the contest in 2009 to select the Face of the Alliance, a pet that would represent the organization throughout the year, and the ballot has run annually since. Recent cycles are documented on the Alliance's own winners banner, which names Pfrankie as the 2025 champion, Samuel L Jackson as the 2024 champion, Hope as the 2023 champion and Cici as the 2022 champion.

The most recent fully dated voting window belongs to the 2025 round: "The general public can vote for their favorite pet online" from 9:00 AM Central Time on Wednesday, October 15, 2025 through midnight, 11:59:59 PM Central Time, on Saturday, November 1, 2025. The round before it opened on October 17, 2024 and closed on November 6, 2024 at 11:59pm, so the two published windows together mark late October as this ballot's natural stretch on the calendar.

The current edition carries the title 2026 Face of the Alliance, and the ballot now displays a Contest has ended notice for that round. Beyond those points several details stay off the page: the Alliance has not posted a window for the next round, and entry dates for supporters who want to submit a pet photo are not printed either. The ballot page publishes no category roster of any kind; confirm on the live ballot each cycle.

How does a supporter vote in the Face of the Alliance contest?

Voting takes place entirely on the Alliance's contest site at gogophotocontest.com/maal. A supporter opens the page, browses the pet entries under View Entries and backs the animal whose photo he or she wants to see crowned. The defining detail of this ballot is the price: each vote cast costs $1.00, which turns every click into a small donation to the Missouri Alliance for Animal Legislation and its work at the Missouri Capitol. No free tier is printed anywhere on the page, so a campaign's vote total and its fundraising total are the same figure.

Deadlines on the ballot are printed in Central Time, which matters for supporters living near the edges of the zone and for anybody scheduling a final push on closing night. On limits, the voting page sets out no per-person ceiling and no daily-return rule, so a supporter planning repeated votes has nothing on the ballot itself to consult; the Rules tab is where any such condition would live. The page likewise offers no printed equivalent of the free daily clicks and bonus windows that free reader polls often use, because the fundraiser format replaces them with straightforward paid votes. Anyone weighing whether outside help fits a ballot where votes are already bought on the spot can find the general background at our award votes overview.

How does this ballot compare with other Missouri contests?

Within Missouri's public-vote scene, the programs covered beside this one are almost all best-of rankings: A-List St. Louis Magazine, Best of KC, Best of Southwest Missouri, the Columbia Missourian Reader's Choice Awards, Columbia MO CommunityVotes and Feast Magazine's FEAST 50. Those ballots invite readers to crown favorite restaurants, salons, clinics and other local businesses, and they generally treat a vote as a free click.

The Face of the Alliance Calendar Contest breaks that pattern in ways that matter to anyone campaigning. Its nominees are pets rather than merchants, its winner earns a year as the public face of an animal welfare law organization instead of a best-of plaque, and its votes are paid contributions rather than free ones.

The audiences overlap, though. A St. Louis household that votes in the A-List every fall is exactly the household an Alliance candidate pet wants to reach, and the autumn timing means the two kinds of ballot compete for the same attention in the same weeks. For an Alliance supporter the practical consequence is tone: appeals that work on a free ranking ballot, such as asking friends for a quick click, need a fundraising frame here, since every vote asks for $1.00. Each sibling program keeps its own route on this site for readers who want the comparison in full.

How can a supporter strengthen a pet's campaign in this fundraiser?

Strengthening a pet's chances here looks different from boosting a free-poll entry, because the $1.00 vote price turns every ask into a fundraising appeal. The moves that fit this ballot are concrete: send supporters the pet's entry page link directly rather than the contest homepage, name the closing night in every message so nobody arrives after the Central Time deadline, and remind donors that their vote money backs the only organization in Missouri devoted exclusively to animal welfare legislation. Sharing works best when it explains why the payment exists, since a donor who understands the mission gives again.

The ballot prints no policy on automated voting tools or outside services, so anyone considering help beyond friends and family should read the Alliance's Rules tab and weigh what is actually printed there. Broader tactics that stay inside a ballot's own terms are gathered at our guide to earning more votes online.