2025 Homeward Bound Alumni Calendar Contest: How Voting Works & How to Win

Who votes and why the alumni calendar exists

The 2025 Homeward Bound Alumni Calendar Contest is a fundraiser ballot run by Homeward Bound Pet Adoption Center, a shelter located at 125 County House Rd in Blackwood, New Jersey. The premise is simple and personal: people who have adopted a dog or cat from the center submit that pet's photo, and the wider community votes on which animals appear in the printed alumni calendar for the following year. It is a best-of style ballot in which the nominees are not businesses or local institutions but the shelter's own success stories.

The ballot runs on GoGo Photo Contest, a fundraising platform built for shelter and nonprofit photo votes. Supporters reach it at gogophotocontest.com/homewardbound, where the current edition sits behind a View Entries and Vote button. The page describes the ballot as a fundraiser for the center and states that all proceeds from voting go to it, so the money cast during the window supports the shelter's work directly.

That gives this ballot an unusual character among New Jersey public votes. Most reader ballots in the state ask supporters to pick a favorite local business; this one asks them to pick a pet they may have watched get adopted. The emotional stake is the point, and it is also why the organizer can raise money at the same time as it celebrates its alumni. The table below gathers the fixed facts about the program.

The dated record for this ballot

Two editions of the alumni calendar contest are confirmed: 2025 and 2026. The 2025 cycle is the one with a full printed timeline. Adopters who wanted their pet on the ballot submitted the animal's name and photo by email between October 16 and 30, which served as the entry or nomination phase. Public voting then ran from November 6 through November 12, and the ballot closed at 8:00 PM Eastern Time on Sunday, November 23, 2025, a deadline the organizer announced with the words "so don't delay."

The 2026 edition is confirmed by the ballot page itself, which carries the title 2026 Homeward Bound Alumni Calendar Contest and invites supporters to vote for which pets are featured in the 2026 alumni calendar. That page also carries a contest-has-ended notice, so the edition it describes has completed its run. What the adoption center has not published is a 2027 announcement, an entry window for the next cycle, or the exact opening and closing days of the 2026 edition; confirm on the live ballot each cycle.

For planning purposes, the 2025 shape is the best guide: roughly two weeks of email entry in the second half of October, a public voting week in early November, and a hard close later that month. Treat that as a pattern drawn from one documented cycle rather than a promise, since the organizer has run the program publicly for only two editions so far and publishes its dates edition by edition on the GoGo Photo Contest page.

How a supporter votes on the ballot today

The mechanic is a paid photo vote. A supporter opens the ballot at gogophotocontest.com/homewardbound, clicks View Entries and Vote, and browses the submitted alumni pets. Each entry carries its photo and a vote control. Choosing a vote amount starts a checkout on GoGo Photo Contest, where the printed rule is that votes cost one dollar each with a five dollar minimum. The platform's copyright line names GGPC, LLC as its operator, and the sign-in link on the ballot lets returning supporters keep an account across editions.

Because every vote is a donation, the ballot rewards committed supporters rather than casual clickers. A relative who buys the minimum five votes has done more for an entry than a hundred people who only admired the photo. That is the organizer's design, not a workaround: the shelter chose a platform where support and fundraising are the same action, and it states plainly that all proceeds go to the center.

What the ballot does not print is a per-supporter limit. Whether a single voter can vote repeatedly, and how often, is nowhere stated, and no eligibility text for voters appears at all. The organizer also does not print a category roster dividing dogs from cats or puppies from seniors; the entries appear as one field of alumni pets. Anyone who needs those details before planning a voting budget should read the rules link on the live ballot for the edition in progress.

Where this ballot sits among New Jersey public votes

Within New Jersey, this page's neighbours are mostly reader's choice ballots: the Asbury Park Press Readers' Choice, a dentists ballot covering Bergen and Morris counties, a community choice awards ballot from Bergen, a Jersey Shore best-of vote, a statewide best-of ballot, and a Monmouth County readers' choice run by Jersey Bites. All of them share the best-of vertical, and all of them ask the public to crown a local favorite. Every one is published separately, on its own schedule, by its own publisher, so none of them sets rules for the others.

The alumni calendar differs from every one of those in three ways. First, its nominees are shelter animals rather than businesses, which means the entry pool is closed to adopters of one specific organization. Second, it is explicitly a fundraiser: the one dollar vote price is the point, where most reader ballots treat voting as free engagement. Third, its market is not a county or a media audience but the adoption community of a single Blackwood shelter, which gives it a much smaller and more personal electorate.

For a supporter, that difference matters in practice. Tactics from newspaper ballots transfer only partly: sharing an entry link works everywhere, but here the ask is a small donation rather than a free click, and the calendar prize gives winners a printed keepsake rather than a badge or a plaque. Readers comparing New Jersey ballots can follow the sibling links on this page to see how the formats differ.

Strengthening support for an entry in this ballot

On a paid ballot, the winning strategy is depth of support, not raw reach. An adopter's best move is to identify the people most likely to spend the five dollar minimum, give them the direct entry link, and ask them early in the window rather than in the final hours. A short personal message about how the pet came home from the shelter converts far better than a generic share, because the story is what this ballot is actually selling.

The organizer's own rules are the only ones that matter here, and Homeward Bound prints no restriction on how supporters are recruited, only the price of each vote. That said, any outside help should stay inside what the ballot's rules page allows, and the award votes overview explains how paid award ballots like this one are usually structured before anyone spends beyond the minimum.