Humane Society of Catawba County Furry Faces Calendar Competition: How Voting Works & How to Win

What is the Furry Faces Calendar Competition and who runs it?

Humane Society of Catawba County, an animal-welfare nonprofit headquartered at 3224 20th Ave SE in Hickory, North Carolina, turns its supporters' pets into a fundraising engine every summer. Its Furry Faces Calendar Competition invites owners to put forward a photograph of a dog, cat or other companion animal, then hands the decision to the public. The ballot's own copy puts the challenge plainly, asking whether your pet "has what it takes to grace the HSCC calendar cover."

The vote is delivered on GoGo Photo Contest, a dedicated balloting service whose footer carries a 2026 copyright line for GGPC, LLC. The live ballot sits at https://www.gogophotocontest.com/hsccfurryfaces2025, and its layout follows the pattern familiar from charity photo fundraisers: a gallery of animal portraits, a running tally beside each one, and a prize structure that rewards campaigning. Because the reward is a printed calendar rather than cash or a title, the contest reads less like a business ranking and more like a community celebration of the county's animals, which is exactly the tone a shelter fundraiser lives on.

The ballot identifies itself simply as a fundraiser for Humane Society of Catawba County, tying every entry back to the organization's work in Catawba County. Beside its prize listing it also shows a "Reserve Your Day Here" prompt, a second route into the calendar that runs alongside the vote itself.

Which editions have run and when did the latest window fall?

Five editions of the competition appear across its ballots: 2020, 2021, 2022, 2024 and 2025. Each carried its own calendar year in the title and its own page on the platform, and the older addresses remain reachable, including the 2022 edition at https://www.gogophotocontest.com/hsccfurryfaces2022. No 2023 entry shows up in that lineup, so the run has not been perfectly continuous from one summer to the next.

That makes the campaign a month-long sprint from first ballot to final whistle, with no separate nomination round published ahead of it. Anyone modelling a future campaign should assume the same broad shape while treating the details as provisional.

Three things the ballot leaves unsaid matter to anyone planning a run. No category list appears anywhere, since every entry is simply a pet photo competing against every other. Neither the contest pages nor the rules tab spells out how often one person may vote, nor who counts as eligible to take part. And the society has not yet posted dates for the following summer; day-level open and close times for the next round are unannounced, so confirm on the live ballot each cycle.

How does a supporter vote on the GoGo Photo Contest ballot?

The ballot behaves like any other page on GoGo Photo Contest. Its menu includes View Entries, Participate, Contest Rules, Rules, Prizes, About and Sign In. To back a particular animal, open View Entries, browse the gallery of portraits, select the one you favour and register a vote against it. An owner who wants a pet on the ballot starts at Participate instead, uploading the photo that will represent the animal for the rest of the month.

The ballot's guidance to entrants leans on persistence: it tells owners to "Vote early and often" for their pet. In practice that means the entry link travels by text, email and social feed, and supporters come back to it throughout the window instead of voting once and forgetting. The page is a standard website, so the same actions work in a phone browser as on a laptop.

One detail the visible text never settles is whether a casual voter must hold an account: Sign In appears in the menu, but nothing states when registration is required. Entrants weighing outside help can read a neutral overview at award and contest votes.

How does this fundraiser sit beside other North Carolina ballots?

Within North Carolina coverage, the Furry Faces ballot belongs to a crowd of reader-choice contests. Its nearest neighbours include Best of North Carolina, the Best of the Best rankings put out by Charlotte Magazine, the Daily Reflector's contest for Pitt County, Fayetteville's Community's Choice Awards, the 2025 Diamond Awards and the 910Preps Fans' Choice Boys Soccer Player of the Year. All six run on a public vote, yet none of them looks like a shelter calendar.

Three differences stand out. The subject is an animal, not a business, a dish or an athlete, so campaigns run on affection and loyalty rather than commercial pride. The scale is local, rooted in Hickory and Catawba County, while those other ballots chase audiences across the whole state or around Charlotte. And the prize is personal and lasting: a place in a printed calendar that stays on display for a full year, long after a weekly poll has been forgotten.

For a supporter deciding among these ballots, the practical consequence is that the Furry Faces audience is smaller and tighter-knit, so a handful of committed backers around one pet moves the board in a way few metro-wide rankings ever reward.

How can an entrant strengthen a pet's campaign?

The ballot's own advice sets the tone: there is, in its words, "no such thing as resting on beauty in the Furry Faces 2025 Calendar Competition," and "those who campaign and promote will be rewarded." Translation for an entrant: the photo alone rarely carries a pet into the leading pack. Share the entry link the moment the window opens, ask Hickory and wider Catawba County contacts directly, and keep posting reminders across the month so the campaign never goes quiet.

A steady drumbeat beats a single burst in a contest that stretches over a whole month, because every day an entry slides down the board is a day rivals gain ground. Since the society prints no policy on outside assistance, entrants who want structured ideas can study tactics that transfer well to ballots like this one in our guide to earning more votes.