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

A Kenmore shelter's own search for 12 calendar photos

Buffalo CARES Animal Rescue built this contest around a specific number: 12. The shelter, based in Kenmore, New York, describes the program as its search for a dozen photos of supporters' pets to fill its own fundraising calendar, run through GoGo Photo Contest at gogophotocontest.com/buffalocares. Whichever 12 photos pull the most votes by the time a cycle closes become that year's calendar winners.

The confirmed 2022 cycle automatically ended at 8:00 PM Eastern on Friday, September 30, 2022. A second confirmed edition carries the 2023 calendar name. A winning photo still had to follow the contest's own rules to keep its spot; the page notes an entry could still be disqualified after the fact if it didn't.

Neither the category list nor a voting ceiling is printed there; confirm on the live ballot each cycle before assuming a rule the shelter hasn't stated.

Money raised, a printed calendar, and a shelter behind both

The shelter's own description ties the contest directly to its budget: money the calendar effort raises goes toward medical care for the animals in its care. Nothing published breaks that figure down further or names a fundraising target for either confirmed cycle, so the medical-care framing is the extent of what's stated rather than a specific dollar goal.

Twelve winning photos is a wider prize pool than a single-winner format would allow, spreading recognition across a dozen different pets and their supporters rather than crowning just one. That structure suits a shelter fundraiser aiming for broad participation over one headline winner.

Two editions confirmed, not a decade of history

What's confirmed spans two cycles, one closing in 2022 and a second carrying the 2023 calendar name. Someone sizing up whether to back a pet photo here is backing a fundraiser still building its own track history, not one with a long list of past calendars already behind it.

A printed calendar also gives a winning photo a life beyond the day voting ends. The finished 2023 calendar puts a pet's picture in front of whoever ends up with a copy for the rest of that year, a longer run than a single online post would get on its own.

New York's other business ballots, and why none of them are this

New York's public-vote landscape covers a lot of separate ground, and lumping a Kenmore shelter's calendar fundraiser in with the state's business ballots misses what's actually different here. Best of Brooklyn, Best of Queens, and Best of the Bronx each cover business nominations for their own borough. Best of Hudson Valley and Best of Westchester extend that same format north of the city, while The City's Best, Best of New York City widens the lens across all five boroughs together.

None of those six run a shared judging pool, a shared prize, or a shared deadline with Buffalo CARES Animal Rescue's own fundraiser. A pet photo doing well here has no bearing on any business ballot in that table, and the reverse holds too.

Turning real supporters into the 12 winning photos

With exactly 12 winning spots and no published voting ceiling standing in the way, the strongest path is getting people who genuinely know a specific pet, an owner, a foster family, a shelter volunteer, to click through to gogophotocontest.com/buffalocares and cast an actual vote. A single push right when a cycle opens rarely carries a photo all the way to September 30; supporters returning closer to the deadline tend to matter more.

Because Buffalo CARES Animal Rescue runs the whole thing itself as a shelter fundraiser, padded or automated votes put a photo's spot at risk on a program only two cycles into its own history. is buying votes legal covers that risk before any outside help gets involved, and fan-poll vote delivery walks through the mechanics that apply to a shelter fundraiser exactly like this one.

Timing matters here because the cutoff isn't a loose end-of-month guess, it's a fixed hour. A contest that automatically shuts off at 8:00 PM Eastern doesn't leave room to recover from a slow start the way a softer deadline might. Lining up who will vote, and when, before that hour on September 30 beats scrambling once the page already shows the contest closed.