We held our first Virtual pet Halloween Costume Contest his year and it was a HUGE success. We are a new non-profit (started this January) run entirely by volunteers (with full time jobs). The idea was to have a virtual pet costume contest to bring attention to our nonprofit without having to deal with the liability issues with animals being together and perhaps not getting along - and without a whole bunch of logistics and volunteers.
We started advertising the event about 1 month out. We got 4 volunteers to serve as judges and their companies were named "sponsors" of the event. In the end, they did not provide any funding for the event although there was talk of them providing prizes .. it just never materialized. We were fine with that for this year but for next year we will ask them to provide prizes. We spent about $150 in prizes (small dollar store type of items) which we put in small gift bags.
The contest was open only to dogs and cats in our county because our nonprofit serves only dogs and cats in our county. We felt it was important to stay close to our mission with this event.
The award categories were: cutest dog, most dapper dog, cutest cat, most dapper cat, funniest costume, spookiest costume and most creative costume.
The event ran from October 20-27. Pet owners uploaded the photo of their pet any day from October 20 - October 26. The photos were uploaded to our Facebook page with the pet's name, city of residence, and the owner's name. I took the photos and put them on a page on our website -- with pet name and city of resident only. I then hid all the entries on the Facebook page so there would be no biased.
The judges picked the winners for each category and emailed those to me on October 27.
Then on the evening of October 26 through 5 pm on October 27 we opened up the competition for voting of the People's Choice Award and had the public vote on their one favorite. Votes were entered on our Facebook page. I tallied those up at 5 pm.
All winners were announced on our Facebook page as well as on our website. I will be distributing the prizes either via mail or pickup (depending on where they live.)
It was a lot of fun - minimal cost - and got our name out there. We will do it again next year.
I attempted to upload some artwork but the system is not allowing me to do so. Not sure why. (Maddie's Fund - can you advise?)
https://spayedandaid.org/costume-contest
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Karen Kirsch
Founder
Spayed and Aid
KY
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