Buffalo CARES Animal Rescue Buffalo CARES 2023 Calendar Contest: How Voting Works & How to Win

What the Buffalo CARES calendar contest is and who runs it

The Buffalo CARES 2023 Calendar Contest is a pet photo fundraiser that Buffalocares, the organizer behind the Buffalo CARES Animal Rescue in Kenmore, New York, stages each year it runs. The rescue's stated purpose for the contest is to find twelve wonderful photos of supporters' pets to feature in its 2023 fundraising calendar, and the money raised goes to medical care for the animals in its charge. That makes this a charity fundraiser first and a popularity ballot second: every vote cast is a vote for which animals represent the rescue on the walls of its donors for a full year.

The ballot itself is served by GoGo Photo Contest, a platform built specifically for photo contests, at gogophotocontest.com/buffalocares. The page carries the usual furniture of that system: a Participate link, View Entries, Rules, an About Us section and Sign In, with all timing expressed in Eastern Time. The rescue's location is given as 2565 Elmwood Ave, Kenmore, NY 14217, which places the fundraiser in the Buffalo-area market of western New York.

Facts at a glance

Because the prize is a place in a printed calendar rather than a business title, the constituency voting here is different from a citywide readers poll. The people casting ballots are the rescue's adopters, donors and followers, and the photos they push forward are of animals they may well have met.

The dated record: which editions ran and when the window falls

Two editions of the calendar contest are confirmed, 2022 and 2023. The 2022 cycle is the one with a published closing: the contest was set to automatically end at 8:00 PM Eastern Time on Friday, September 30, 2022, at which point the twelve photos with the most votes would be selected as the winners. The voting month for that edition was September, running from the start of the month through that final Friday evening.

The 2023 edition is confirmed by the ballot page itself, which carries the 2023 calendar contest title and describes the search for photos for the 2023 fundraising calendar. Beyond those two years, the organizer has not published the year of the next edition, so the recurring pattern rests on the confirmed pair and the ballot page's own continuation.

Several details a careful supporter would want are not printed anywhere by Buffalocares. The exact opening and closing days beyond the confirmed September 2022 close, the list of photo categories, any ceiling on votes from a single person, and eligibility rules for entering a photo are all absent from the published page; confirm on the live ballot each cycle. Round dates the platform might set between entry and voting are likewise unpublished.

What the published page does make explicit is the disqualification condition: photos must follow the contest rules or may be disqualified. That single sentence is the organizer's only stated quality gate, and it applies to the twelve winning photos at the close of voting.

How a supporter votes in the Buffalo CARES calendar contest

Voting is a direct action on the GoGo Photo Contest ballot. A supporter opens gogophotocontest.com/buffalocares, lands on the contest home with its Participate and View Entries links, and chooses View Entries to browse the pet photos already submitted. Each entry carries its own vote action, so the path from browsing to voting is a single click once a supporter has picked the animal they want in the calendar.

The page also offers Sign In, which is how returning supporters identify themselves to the platform if the edition's rules call for it. Whether an account is required to vote, and whether a person may come back day after day during the September window, are details the organizer has not printed; the rules tab of the ballot page governs for each edition.

Timing on the ballot runs in Eastern Time, which matters in the final hours: the confirmed 2022 close was 8:00 PM Eastern on Friday, September 30, and a supporter voting from elsewhere in the New York market is on that same clock. Votes cast after the automatic close do not count toward the twelve winning places.

For a supporter whose pet is entered, the practical work is outside the ballot: the entry needs eyes, and the audience likeliest to cast ballots is made up of people who already care about the rescue. Sharing the direct entry link with that audience, and reminding them before the closing hour, is the mechanic this fundraiser rewards. The votes guide collects the methods that fit a photo ballot of this shape.

How this ballot sits beside its New York neighbours

The Buffalo CARES calendar contest is a single-organizer charity ballot, and that separates it from the other New York programs on this site, which are citywide and regional readers polls. The nearest neighbours by state are Best of Brooklyn, Best of Hudson Valley, Best of New York City, Best of Queens, Best of the Bronx and Best of Westchester, each a best-of ballot answering to its own publisher and market.

Those programs ask voters to pick favourite businesses across a metro area; this one asks a rescue's community to pick pet photos for a calendar. The difference shows in the constituency. A readers poll draws from a whole borough's audience, while the Buffalo CARES ballot draws from people with a direct tie to the Kenmore rescue, which is why a photo of a well-loved local animal can outperform a more polished entry.

The platform differs too. The New York best-of ballots run on their publishers' own voting systems, while this fundraiser sits on GoGo Photo Contest, a system designed for photo contests with entry pages, rules tabs and automatic closing times. That structure shapes how support works here: the unit of competition is a single photo with its own address, not a business listing in a category table.

For a supporter comparing the two shapes, the practical difference is focus. A borough-wide poll spreads attention across many categories, while this ballot concentrates it on twelve calendar places, so every vote carries more weight toward the printed result.

Strengthening support for a pet photo in this fundraiser

Support in this contest flows through the rescue's own community. The ballot rewards the photo that reaches the most people who care about Buffalo CARES, so the first move for an entrant is to share the direct entry link with adopters, donors and fellow volunteers, then ask them to vote and ask again as the September close approaches. The confirmed 2022 close at 8:00 PM Eastern on the final Friday shows why timing matters: late reminders land hardest in the last days.

Regarding outside help, the organizer's published position is limited to the rules condition already printed: photos must follow the contest rules or may be disqualified. No published statement addresses purchased support either way, and the rules tab of the ballot page is where any such condition would appear for the current edition. The legal and practical background is covered in is buying votes legal, and the mechanics of paid support generally are described on buy award votes.

What no outside method replaces is the fit between this ballot and its audience: a calendar of rescue pets sells to the people who already love the rescue, so entrants who mobilize that audience are working with the fundraiser's own grain.