Capital Humane Society Tails and Trails Pet Photo Contest: How Voting Works & How to Win

A shelter's own fundraiser, priced at a dollar a vote

Capital Humane Society, based in Lincoln, runs the Tails & Trails Pet Photo Contest as its own fundraiser rather than a media outlet's readers'-choice poll. That distinction matters: the shelter keeps every dollar a vote generates, and GoGo Photo Contest, which hosts the entry pages at gogophotocontest.com/tailstrails24, prices each vote as a one-dollar donation rather than a free click.

Two rounds are confirmed: 2024 and 2025. Both opened in May, and the 2024 round's photo submission deadline landed at 9 p.m. Central time on Sunday, May 12. Exactly how voting proceeds once entries close isn't spelled out on the confirmed page.

Read that bottom row plainly: confirm on the live ballot each cycle, since a two-round history hasn't found a steady annual rhythm the way some older shelter fundraisers already have.

A donate-to-vote fundraiser, not a free-click ballot

GoGo Photo Contest structures Tails & Trails differently from most readers'-choice ballots on this site. Rather than a free click counted once per visitor, a vote here is a small donation, one dollar, credited directly to Capital Humane Society. That changes the math for anyone building support: ten friends voting once each raises real money for the shelter, not just a tally.

Submitted photos carry a stated rule missing from many ballots: once entered, a photo becomes the property of Capital Humane Society. A pet owner should know that going in, ahead of worrying about categories or a vote count.

What that means for a Lincoln household entering a pet

The confirmed page doesn't draw a boundary right at Lincoln's city line, so a household from just outside that regularly supports the shelter isn't obviously turned away. Capital Humane Society is the only authority on exactly who may enter; that answer lives on the live page, not in an assumption carried over from some other shelter's contest.

Lincoln's shelter fundraiser, kept apart from Nebraska's business and sports ballots

Nebraska hosts several unrelated public ballots that share a state, or even a city name, with Tails & Trails without sharing anything else. Best of Omaha and Best of the Big O judge local businesses; KOLN Lincoln Athlete of the Week judges high-school athletes; Lincoln Parade of Homes judges builders. None of them touch Capital Humane Society's pet-photo entries, so success with one of them means nothing toward another.

A search for "Lincoln pet contest" could just as easily turn up one of those unrelated ballots, or an outdated listing from a previous year, as the current fundraiser. Only two dates hold steady across both confirmed rounds: entries open in May, and the 2024 round's deadline fell on the 12th. Everything past that belongs to gogophotocontest.com/tailstrails24 itself.

What a dollar-a-vote push actually looks like before the deadline

Two confirmed rounds is a short history to lean on, so a Lincoln pet owner is better served asking real people for their dollar before this round closes than waiting on a longer run of history Capital Humane Society hasn't published yet. Line up which friends, neighbors, and coworkers will actually click through to gogophotocontest.com/tailstrails24, then reach out to each of them a second time rather than stopping after one ask.

Because each vote costs something, padding a tally with fake or automated activity carries a heavier practical cost here than on a free-click ballot, since genuine one-dollar donations end up bundled with whatever looks artificial. Which photo wins is a separate question that only Capital Humane Society settles, once its own judging wraps up after the round closes. is buying votes legal lays out where ordinary outreach stops and a risky shortcut starts, useful reading before putting real money behind a Tails & Trails entry. Buying votes online walks through what paid help typically means for a donate-to-vote fundraiser like this one, and award-vote campaign planning applies to a dollar-per-vote format just as much as to the more common free-click ballot.