2024 Rescue Brew Beer Contest: How Voting Works & How to Win

What the Rescue Brew Beer Contest is and who runs it

The 2024 Rescue Brew Beer Contest is a fundraising ballot organized by the Charleston Animal Society, an animal welfare organization headquartered at 2455 Remount Road, North Charleston, South Carolina 29406. The program's full title on the ballot page is the 2024 Rescue Brew Beer Contest, and it sits in the best-of vertical: supporters vote to decide which rescue dogs and cats take on the Spokesdog and Spokescat roles for the organization.

GoGo Photo Contest carries the ballot at the address gogophotocontest.com/rescuebrewcontest-2024, and that service specializes in photo-based fundraising contests for nonprofits. The 2024 page carries the organization's masthead and lists a set of sponsors alongside the contest: No Kill South Carolina, Commonhouse Aleworks, Charleston City Paper and Southern Crown Distributing all appear as partners of the 2024 edition.

The table below collects the core facts a supporter or researcher needs about this program.

Because the program is a fundraiser first and a popularity ballot second, its rules read differently from the reader's-choice contests run by local publishers. The Charleston Animal Society sets its own contest rules, prizes and entry terms on the ballot page, and the platform exists to process the donations behind each vote.

The dated history of Rescue Brew editions

The confirmed edition years for the Rescue Brew Beer Contest are 2020, 2021, 2024 and 2025. The organizer's own coverage describes the event as an annual fundraiser, and the 2020 edition raised about $66,000 for the Charleston Animal Society, which is the earliest confirmed year for the program.

The 2024 cycle is the most fully dated. Its Submission Period started April 4, 2024 and ended April 21, 2024. The Voting Period then opened Monday, April 22, 2024 at 12:00 AM Eastern and closed Monday, May 20, 2024 at 11:59:59 PM Eastern. Each vote cast during that window was tied to a donation, and the ballot page states the contest is a fundraiser for the Charleston Animal Society.

What the organizer has not published on the ballot page is the complete list of categories a Rescue Brew edition carries; confirm on the live ballot each cycle. The 2024 masthead names the Spokesdog and Spokescat roles, but the full category structure behind them is not printed in the material available for this page.

Two practical notes follow from this timeline. First, the 2024 page itself displays a contest-has-ended notice and points readers toward the latest edition, so anyone arriving after May 20, 2024 should follow that link to the live cycle. Second, for editions other than 2024 the open and close days are not carried here, so the current ballot page is the place to read the window for the cycle you want to enter.

How a supporter votes in the Rescue Brew contest

The mechanic on the 2024 Rescue Brew ballot was a donation vote. The contest rules state it plainly: each $1 donation counts as 1 vote. A supporter picks an entry, follows the donation prompt, and the dollars given translate directly into votes for that Spokesdog or Spokescat hopeful.

The sequence on the GoGo Photo Contest page runs as follows. The supporter opens the ballot at gogophotocontest.com/rescuebrewcontest-2024, uses the View Entries section to browse the dogs and cats competing in the current edition, selects a favorite, and completes the donation that registers the votes. The page also carries Contest Rules, Prizes and About Us links, so the rules governing the current cycle are always one click from the ballot itself.

Because votes are purchased with donations rather than cast free, the strategy question changes shape compared with a free daily-vote contest. A supporter who wants an entry to rise can give directly, and can invite others to give, since every participant's donation adds to the same tally. There is no published daily return routine for this ballot in the 2024 material; the donation step is the whole mechanic.

One caution belongs here. The 2024 page marks its own contest as ended and redirects to the newest edition, so the exact prompts, minimum amounts and any account requirements a supporter meets at the donation step belong to the live cycle. Reading the rules link on the current ballot before giving is the reliable way to confirm how that edition counts votes.

How Rescue Brew sits beside other South Carolina ballots

The Rescue Brew Beer Contest is unusual in the South Carolina ballot landscape because it is run by a nonprofit rather than a publisher. Most of its neighbors are reader's-choice programs: the Best of Charleston contest from the Charleston City Paper, which also sponsors the Rescue Brew ballot, and Charleston Magazine's Best Of, both of which poll readers on local businesses.

Outside Charleston, the state's ballot scene includes Best of Columbia from Columbia Metropolitan, the Free Times Best of Columbia edition, the statewide Best of South Carolina Awards, and the BroadwayWorld South Carolina Awards for theater. Each of those answers to its own publisher and carries its own rules, windows and categories.

What separates Rescue Brew from all of them is the subject and the stake. Its nominees are rescue animals competing for the Spokesdog and Spokescat roles, its votes are donations to the Charleston Animal Society, and its proceeds fund the organization's work rather than a publisher's audience survey. That also means the competitive advice that fits a free-vote readers' poll, such as daily returns, applies differently here, where the donation step drives the tally. Supporters weighing outside help for any of these ballots can compare the programs on our award-votes reference page before deciding how to back an entry.

Strengthening support for a Rescue Brew entry

On a donation ballot like Rescue Brew, building support means moving dollars, not repeat clicks. The 2024 rules made each $1 donation one vote, so the most effective push is one that brings new donors to the entry page: a personal ask with the entry link, a photo of the dog or cat you are backing, and a clear line about where the money goes, since every vote is a gift to the Charleston Animal Society.

Timing matters within the confirmed window. The 2024 voting period ran the full stretch from April 22 to May 20, so an entry campaign has weeks to build rather than days, and spreading asks across that window usually reaches more donors than a single late push.

What governs outside help is the rule set the organizer publishes, and those rules sit on the ballot page for each edition. Anyone considering purchased support should read the current rules first and can review how vote services work in general on our guide to getting more votes online. A win in the Rescue Brew tally cannot be promised by anyone, because the donation totals of every competing entry are visible to all supporters as the window runs.