FAQ

Absolutely not! While many of our clients are involved with animals in one way or another, it is by no means exclusive to this arena. We are working with park foundations, social-issue non-profits, blindness-prevention groups, arboretums and other groups. If you can take a picture of it, shoot a video of it, record its sound, or write about it; our system, either as a standard package or a customization, can help you reach your fundraising goals.

If you are in the US, you will be able to accept international credit cards. If you are outside of the US, we will set up your contest to use PayPal.

Yes and no- You'll have access to all of the photos once the photo contest is over. However, our software automatically downsizes all of the uploaded photos in order to optimize site loading time. We do not keep the original files on our server. Keep in mind that even if we did, there is no guarantee that an entrant will upload a photo large enough to be professionally printed.

We recommend having an area in your rules stating that winners will be asked to re-submit their photos once the contest has ended, and that if an original photo is not large enough for calendar printing you may have to default to the next highest vote-getter.

Also keep in mind that you can always use the downsized images as thumbnails in the actual calendar, either as a border on each month or on a collage page. (Our software downsizes all photos to 450 pixel width.) We've found that the inclusion of all photos entered into a contest tends to encourage more participation!

We will contact you with all of the details once you have submitted a the contract for your 360 Photo Contest. Some things you will need:

• Banking information for your WePay account setup.You will receive an email from them with instructions on creating a WePay account.
• A banner (ideally 1024 px by 220 px)
• Your contest rules 
• The start date and end date of your contest 

Your 360 Photo Contest can be simple, or you can take advantage of some of our other features, such as:

• Customized homepage content
• Sponsor logos in the footer
• Customized email sent to all contest entrants
• Separate entry and voting end dates

We are here to help you through every step of your photo contest!

Once we have your contest set up, we will send you a unique URL. All you have to do is set up a link on your website to that URL. Then people can go directly from your site to the contest.

We can work with just about any size or type of graphic file you would have. The banner for each 360 Photo Contest is a maximum 1024 pixels wide. Their is no constraint on the height.

The “donate to vote” is a key component to this standard system. It legitimizes the contest aspect of it, and it also vastly increases the revenue potential. If you wanted to have a “donate to submit” (entry fee) AND a “donate to vote”, this system allows for that. However, if you wanted to remove the “donate to vote” aspect, that would be a customization. It's possible, but it’s not part of our standard package.

Anyone can donate and vote as often as they wish.

All organizations have access to an administrative back-end that allows you to approve/deny entries. This back-end also includes options to view participant information and transactions. This information can be easily exported to Excel from within our system.

360 Photo Contest is an easy way to expand your current mailing list!

Public Service Announcements: Contact radio stations, public access or local TV stations, and local service organizations that might support your work (Chamber of Commerce, etc)

Posting to social networking sites: Use Facebook and Twitter to your advantage!

Sponsors: Recruit sponsors for your contest and exchange advertising (we have room for sponsor logos and their links at the footer of each 360 Photo Contest)

Your regular contact with your friends and supporters: Post links to your contest on your website, and send out postcards

The 360 Photo Contest operates in real time, so you will have your photo contest results immediately. It's up to you if you would like them displayed within the contest, or if you would like to have the results disabled to be announced at a later date (perhaps on your own website, or in a radio ad).

This is what Allison Sanders, Director of Development at the Western PA Humane Society said recently about how this process can work. Her answers are in blue. They are gearing up for their 2^nd contest this year. Their first contest, which was last year, raised over $25,000 for them. 

1. Did you use eblasts, newspaper ads (purchased or donated), radio spots (purchased or donated), internal communications (internal newsletter to friends/donors), posters/fliers, or something other?

   We sent out email blasts, put an ad in our newsletter and handed out information in our adoption rooms and at our clinic. We didn’t purchase any newspaper or radio advertising, although we are on a radio station each week with a pet and I believe the person who talks about our pet of the week mentioned the contest on-air. We also printed information 8-up on a page of 8.5 x 11 paper and sent it out with all acknowledgment letters. After our contest, however, we conducted a survey through Survey Monkey and found that most people heard about the contest from our website. Second highest “How did you hear about the contest” response was from our email blast.

2. How much do you think each of these PR efforts led to the success of your campaign?

   Again, I think the PR efforts that helped us the most were our website and email blasts. I don’t know that purchasing a newspaper ad would pay off, so to speak, but I’m thinking about the possibility of getting some on-line ads…we also got postcards made last year (designed for free so we only had to pay for printing) and put them in the goodie bags of everyone who attended our big event last August (over 600 attendees).

3. What advice would you give an organization when using this type of fundraiser?

   I would tell people to keep reminding their constituents about the contest and to tell them to tell their friends! We had a lot of people enter our contest who were not past donors/members or adopters. I think it also helped to send out emails with a sense of urgency (Only 3 days left to vote for your favorite critters!).