2024 RESCUE BREW BEER LABEL CONTEST: How Voting Works & How to Win

A beer label ballot, not a best-of readers poll

New Hampshire's public-vote market is dominated by readers-poll ballots that rank local businesses across dozens of categories. The 2024 Rescue Brew Beer Label Contest sits apart from all of them. It is a pet photo fundraiser, run jointly by Monadnock Humane Society and Frogg Brewing, and the prize is not a plaque or a mention in a magazine: images of one winning dog and one winning cat are printed on the 2024 Rescue Brew beer itself.

The ballot is hosted at GoGo Photo Contest, the same photo-fundraiser platform that shelters across the country use for calendar and label contests, at https://www.gogophotocontest.com/mhsrescuebrew. The shelter side of the partnership operates from 101 W. Swanzey Rd in Swanzey, New Hampshire, and Frogg Brewing is the brewery whose beer carries the winning faces that summer.

Where a CommunityVotes Manchester ballot asks which mechanic or which restaurant deserves the title, the Rescue Brew ballot asks a single question in two halves: which dog and which cat. That narrower frame changes the whole campaign calculus, because a nominee is competing against a small field of animals rather than a statewide list of businesses.

Facts at a glance

The dated record for the Rescue Brew ballot

Confirmed editions of the Rescue Brew contest cover 2024 and 2025. The 2024 ballot page went further and billed the contest as the 3rd Annual Rescue Brew, which places the series' start before the confirmed year list, though the organizers have not published a year-by-year edition roster for those earlier runs.

The 2024 window is the one dated stretch the ballot states in full: the voting period started March 11, 2024 and ended April 12, 2024, with polls closing on April 12 and the countdown running on Eastern Time. Nomination and voting ran together on the same form, so a supporter could nominate a pet with a photo and a $10 donation and start collecting votes inside the same window. The finished beer appeared that summer.

Two things the organizers have not printed on the ballot are worth naming. The full list of ballot categories is absent, beyond the dog-and-cat split the prize structure implies. And no per-voter limit, no one-vote-per-day rule and no eligibility terms are stated on the page; confirm on the live ballot each cycle. Those gaps matter to anyone planning a month-long campaign, because the daily rhythm of a photo fundraiser is set by exactly those rules.

How a supporter votes on the Rescue Brew ballot

The mechanic on the GoGo Photo Contest form is deliberately simple, and every step happens on the ballot at https://www.gogophotocontest.com/mhsrescuebrew. A supporter who wants a pet on the label starts by nominating: a photo of the dog or cat, a $10 donation to Monadnock Humane Society, and a few words on why that animal belongs on a beer can. The donation is part of the entry itself, which is what makes this a fundraiser first and a contest second.

Voting needs no donation. Anyone who lands on the ballot can browse the dog and cat entries, pick a favorite in each side, and press the vote button. The page's own instruction is blunt, "VOTE EARLY AND VOTE OFTEN!", which tells supporters the organizers expect repeat visits across the window rather than a single push.

Two practical notes follow from the ballot's own display. The countdown runs on Eastern Time, so deadline-day votes submitted from elsewhere in the country can arrive after the polls close on April 12. And because standings update on the page as votes land, a nominee's position is always visible, which shapes how hard a supporter pushes in the final stretch. Whether an account is required before a vote registers is not stated on the ballot; confirm on the live ballot each cycle.

Where the Rescue Brew ballot sits among its New Hampshire neighbours

Set the Rescue Brew ballot against the sibling pages it shares a state with and the contrast is immediate. Best of NH and Best of NH cover the entire state under their own separate publishers. Best of the Lakes Region and Best of the Seacoast are regional readers polls. Best of Mount Washington Valley serves the northern valley. CommunityVotes Manchester is city scoped.

The Rescue Brew contest is the only one of the group run by an animal shelter and a brewery, the only one whose nominees are dogs and cats rather than businesses, and the only one where a $10 donation is part of entering. Its market is not a city or a region but the shelter's own supporter base, anchored in Swanzey, New Hampshire, plus craft beer drinkers who will meet the winning animals on a can.

For a campaign planner the difference is practical. A business competing in a statewide readers poll plays a long, multi-category game; a pet owner in the Rescue Brew contest plays a single, personal, roughly month-long race. The tactics overlap, the audiences do not, and that is why the two ballot families are treated separately on this site.

Strengthening support for a nominated pet

Because the Rescue Brew window ran March 11 through April 12, 2024, a nominee's campaign is a spring sprint, not a year-round effort. The concrete moves that fit this ballot: enter early so the $10 donation locks the photo in place before the field grows, write a story people actually share, and ask a specific set of people on a specific day rather than broadcasting once and hoping. The ballot's own "vote early and vote often" framing assumes supporters will return repeatedly, which rewards a nominee who reminds people more than once.

The organizers' rules text is not printed on the ballot page, so what counts as outside help has to be read on the live form. The votes guide collects methods that work on photo fundraisers of this shape, and the award votes page covers the paid-support question in general terms.

One caution is specific to this contest: the prize is a beer label for Monadnock Humane Society and Frogg Brewing, a high-visibility, feel-good outcome, so a campaign that looks irregular risks the entry in a way the shelter's supporters would notice. Whatever a supporter decides, the honest baseline is the same, real people voting for an animal they genuinely like.