Updated February 1, 2012
The Love A Local Business competition lets fans, including customers, vendors, employees, and the community, determine who deserves some love – in the form of small business grants. Please read below for answers to common questions.
Frequently Asked Questions:
Where can I apply for my business to win?
Post a vote for your business on LoveALocalBusiness.com
Where can I review the Official Rules?
Please review the official rules for complete details.
How are the winners of the Love A Local Business small business grants selected?
Votes are like raffle tickets – the more votes a business has the more chances they have to win.
- At the end of the month, one business is randomly chosen from all of the votes posted since the start of the contest.
- While both fans and businesses may vote, the owner of the randomly selected business must also have nominated their own business during the contest period in order to be eligible to win an Intuit Hiring Grant.
If I’ve voted for my business before, can I vote again? Will I break the rules if I vote for myself twice?
If you voted for your business prior to February 1, 2012, you can and should vote for your business again during this contest period. Each time a new contest period starts on LoveALocalBusiness.com, you can and should vote for your business again. The current contest period runs from February 1 through March 31, 2012.
You will not break the rules if you vote for yourself twice. If you accidentally vote for yourself twice (or more often) during a contest period, your duplicate votes are removed from consideration in the random drawing. Only your first vote for your business during a contest period remains valid.
How often can my fans vote for my business? How often can I vote for my business?
Each person (whether a business owner or fan) may post one (1) vote per business during the contest period, which is currently February 1 – March 31, 2012. Duplicate votes from the same email address, or telephone number for text votes, are not valid and are not included in the random drawing conducted by our contest administrator, ePrize. Each person may vote for multiple businesses during the contest period.
How will I know if my business has won?
An Intuit representative will contact you by telephone and email. Your business name will be added to our website’s listing of winners. You will also be contacted by ePrize, our contest administrator, who will send you the required documents to be verified as an official winner.
How do I get more votes? How do I increase my chances of winning?
Visit The Winner’s Playbook page for ideas and tools to help you get more votes from your fans, including banners and badges you can embed on your own website or blog to encourage your fans to support your business, automated sharing via your social networks, and our newest tool, Text2Vote, a free service from Fanminder which allows your fans to vote for you from their mobile phones.
I’m trying to access the custom banners and badges for my business, but the site is sending me in an endless loop. Please try this:
- Go to the Winner’s Playbook
- If you are not already logged in, click “Use my Intuit Login” on the right side of the screen
- After logging in, return to the Winner’s Playbook and click on “Get Custom Banners” on the left side of the screen
- This should allow you to see the embed codes for the customized banners and badges you can place on your own website or blog
How many small business grants have been awarded in the Love A Local Business sweepstakes?
We’ve already awarded over $850,000 in small business grants. Learn about previous Love A Local Business grants winners.
I don’t have a physical address – just a PO Box – can I still compete?
Yes you can still compete. When voting for your business, please provide the physical address of the post office or mailing facility where your PO Box is located. This allows your business to be mapped to a location.
I couldn’t find my business. How do I get my business to show up on the map and in search results?
Try these suggestions:
- Use the postal abbreviation for the state rather than writing out the state name. I.e. “IA” instead of “Iowa” or “CA” instead of “California”. (This has been submitted to our engineers to correct and allow both the abbreviation and complete name.)
- Try an alternate spelling, e.g. Howard’s Furniture and Howards Furniture, YoYo Yoghurt Shop and YoYo Yogurt Shop.
- If that doesn’t help, and you are trying to nominate your own business, make sure you are using the form found on the “I’m a Business Owner” tab. Search for your business in Step 1, then in Step 2, select “complete a manual” nomination. This allows you to add your business to our Intuit Business Directory database — and be found when your fans try to vote for your business.
I can’t find the business I want to nominate? What can I do?
Try these suggestions:
- Use the postal abbreviation for the state rather than writing out the state name. I.e. “IA” instead of “Iowa” or “CA” instead of “California”. (This has been submitted to our engineers to correct and allow both the abbreviation and the state name.)
- Try an alternate spelling, e.g. Howard’s Furniture and Howards Furniture, YoYo Yoghurt Shop and YoYo Yogurt Shop.
- If that doesn’t help, in Step 2, select “complete a manual nomination.” These votes are valid, but may not show up on the map immediately. Make sure to let the business owner know about this competition. They must also nominate themselves to be eligible to win an Intuit Hiring Grant. Also, after they nominate themselves (as described in the question above) their business will be automatically added to our database, which makes it easier for other fans to find them, vote for them, and share comments.
I’m a business owner, and I can’t complete the Intuit Login registration process because the “create account” button is not highlighted.
This indicates that there is an unresolved error message. One or more of the fields should be outlined in red. Click on a field that is outlined in red to see an explanation of the error. Common errors include screen names that are already taken or using an email address that is already in our system. If your email address has already been used, you can retrieve your password, then sign in to complete your nomination.
I’m a fan trying to vote for a business I love. The website won’t accept my vote – or – I’m stuck at Step 3 because the “vote” button isn’t clickable.
These are some typical problems:
The comment was copy/pasted into the box. (Try either clicking somewhere outside the comment box so that the character count will update; or refresh the page, start from Step 1 and type your comment directly in the box rather than copy/paste.)
Try shortening your comment by 5-10 characters – we’ve seen that some punctuations, such as ” ‘ & $ results in inaccurate character counts that cause problems with submissions.
No comment has been posted
Your comment exceeds 250 characters
How do I enable Text2Vote? How do I help my fans use Text2Vote?
You can register and set up Text2Vote by visiting The Winner’s Playbook page and clicking on the “Text2Vote” link. Text2Vote is a free service from Fanminder that can help you get more votes.
There are two (or more) listings for my business with different spellings. Do all the votes count for my business? Can you combine the listings to show all the votes together?
The votes all count for your business, even if there are slight misspellings in the name or address. But, remember that votes are like raffle tickets – each vote increases your chances of winning, but having the most votes doesn’t guarantee you will win.
We can also merge your listings if you would like (although it’s not necessary for winning)! Having one listing means you can see all your great comments together on one listing, and that they will all show up on your custom banners. If you want your listings merged, just send an email with your correct business name and address to LoveALocalBusiness@Intuit.com, with the subject “Please combine listings.”
Can an online-only business win? Or a non-profit?
Yes and yes. Online-only businesses and non-profits can win. We let you determine if a business is local and if you consider it a business.
Why are my fan counts on The Pulse lower than everywhere else on the site?
The purpose of The Pulse is to let small business owners monitor their status in the monthly grant competitions. It is different than an all-time fan count of nominations on LoveALocalBusiness.com. Nominations from fans that posted in a previous contest period are no longer valid for the competition, but they are still meaningful comments about your business.
Help! Someone posted a negative comment about my business. How do I remove it?
First, the good news. You could still win a grant based on their comment – now wouldn’t that be sweet revenge? Second, click “report abuse” so that it gets added to our review tool. Third, if you want to make sure it is reviewed quickly, send an email to lovealocalbusiness@intuit.com with the subject line “Urgent! Remove Negative Comment”
I found out about Love A Local Business through a social game and submitted a nomination, but I haven’t received my game incentive.
Please email support-intuit@socialvibe.com for steps to try and solve the problem. If you are still having problems, please add a comment below.
None of these FAQs answer my question. Often your issue is the same that others are experiencing, so please watch for email updates from lovealocalbusiness@intuit.com for service alerts that may answer your question. (Consider adding the email address to your safe senders list to make sure messages are not caught by your spam filter.) If your issue remains unresolved, you can email lovealocalbusiness@intuit.com. It is most helpful if you include which browser you are using (IE8, Safari, Firefox) and screenshots depicting each step of what you are doing. You can get screenshots by simultaneously clicking CTRL-ALT-PrintScreen on the page then pasting them (CTRL-V or right click-print) into an email or attaching a Powerpoint or Word doc with the screenshots. We will try to respond within 3 business days.
Hi Michele,
The current competition is for a $50,000 hiring grant. Thank you for pointing out the old advertisement. We’ll get it replaced.
Jay B. (Intuit)
Hi Randall,
The top 10 (or “the Pulse”) page updates about every 15 minutes. If you aren’t seeing votes that you expected, we often see that fans are voting for the same business with two different spellings. See the FAQ above that starts with “There are two (or more) listings for my business…” to learn how we can help you merge duplicate listings.
Best wishes for your business,
Jay B. (Intuit)
I had a customer write that she wanted to vote but did not. She feared being flooded by emails from companies other than my own. Do you email voters, are their addresses used for anything else. Just wondering. Thanks
I have quite a few people who have tried to vote for me via text message and get an error message. Im scared to have lost many votes to this? Has anyone encountered issues with this?
Thank you!
Is this contest available in Canada?
Mariel – have you contacted Fanminder, who hosts this free service, to get help with the error messages.
Luanne:
We will not use or sell fan’s information for marketing purposes, but they will receive an email confirmation of their vote. This is disclosed in the “tip text” next to the email field on the nomination form.
Is there a way to check the ranking for my business? Thanks for your reply earlier I will check with fanminder about the text error.
Thank you!
Just wanted to say thanks for this opportunity. Of course we’d be thrilled if we were to be selected (and would make great use of the grant!) but I wanted to take a moment to specifically thank you for the marketing opportunity this contest has provided. The banners showing fan comments directly on our website is fantastic and the facebook buzz this has created for us in our community is incredibly positive.
This all has come at a time when our business really needed this kind of floodlight. So, again, thank you for creating such a clever program.
Beth Wheeler
A Dancer’s Dream
Marblehead, MA
Beth – Thank you so much for kind words. One of our core goals for the Love A Local Business grant competition was to provide an exciting marketing campaign that is easy for small businesses to use. We want everyone to feel like a winner when they read their wonderful fan comments. Good Luck!
I am the Executive Director of a non-profit service agency. We are governed by a Board of Directors. Can I nominate our business?
Hi Kaye,
The answer is yes! Please read the answer to the above question “Can an online-only business win? a non-profit?”.
Jay B. (Intuit)
I found out about the grant money too late. How can i submit for the next or is there going to be another one. Please, i would like too play. Please Email me at thomastax1@att.net. Now I am ordering my info for the up coming tax year, I will be in and out of this site more
I’ve been reading the faq’s and I just want to make sure that I understand correctly. If a business was nominated by the owner and people voted for it prior to Jan 1st, we can still use our original account to nominate ourselves again and new people can vote? Or, do we have to create a new account and nominate ourselves. Forgive me if it is written clearly somewhere and I am just getting confused.
Melanie – You can use the same Intuit login credentials as you used during the last contest period to vote for yourself again. Good luck,
GH
Sounds good – but when you are using international multimedia, it’s disappointing to see that the competition is (or appears to be) restricted to the USA. The world does exist elsewhere, you know!
Dave – You are correct. The Love A Local Business grant competition is open to open only to legal residents of the United States. (Official Rules are here http://blog.intuit.com/local/intuit-love-a-local-business-official-rules/)
Periodically, Intuit businesses that operate in other countires offer grant competitions that are open only to residents of the country(ies) that they serve.
There was some confusion looking at the official rules. Do you already have to have been nominated before the new year to be eligible?
Anthony – A new contest period has started as of January 1. To be eligible to win in this contest period, you need to nominate your business after January 1 and before March 31. The sooner you nominate your business, the more chances you have to win in the monthly random drawings.
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2 voters have posted votes with a slightly different spelling of our name. These votes are on a separate list – how do we merge them into our main list? Thank you!
I have two accounts with votes on each. How can these two be combined to get full credit? Being able to reopen my store front with my “Intuit POS system” depends on this. :)
Thanks, Intuit for giving a fun opportunity for small biz owners like myself a way to deliver his/her dreams. This contest gets the community involve and the local business owner even more involved with their community.
Finally, a business grant tailored for everyone….I didn’t think it existed.
Can I apply for the grant if I am a start up small business? or if I am trying to win the money to grow my start up?
Go for it! It takes just one vote to win. Vote for your business before 11:59pm PT to qualify for the January Finalist prize.
Our non-profit ensemble performs in two locations (Menlo Park and Los Gatos, CA). Our business address is Los Gatos. I wish it were possible for both locations to appear, as patrons local to each venue are different. We discovered your grants because we are right down the road from one of your homes! Thank you Intuit!
Last night I could clearly see that my business was in the TOP TEN way past 11:59PM. Ranking at #10, even though myself and another business had the same amount of votes; they were in the 9th place and I was in 10th. This morning I was so disappointed to see that I am no longer in 10th place either. Can anyone help explain this?
Hi There…
Do I need to re-nominate my Organization again for February and March?… Or.. can I just keep sharing the same link to vote from the January contest period?
Thanks so much.. this really is a generous offering from intuit and has been humbling and affirming to read heartfelt comments left by our supporters.
Cheers,
Sunnie
ok – I’ve been trying for some time and I’ve tried everything!
I cannot seem to access a working link for the custom banners.
The site keeps telling me that I need to nominate my business. I’ve nominated the business twice (on both postings) and still no luck.
Please help!
Thanks so much,
Toni
There are two listings for your business and merged them. You should be able to access the banners at this link.
Thanks, Gretchen!!
My single business “KISS Business Solutions, LLC – Denver, CO 80237 is apparently in the system twice. On the map it sometimes shows my original intuit logon johnatapis…. the other shows the new one (and has the most votes) Not sure why my johnatapis didn’t change from intuit when I left my initial firm I worked for Apis Business Solutions to form KISS Business Solutions last year. Is there a way to combine my two listed companies?
I run a non-profit for those families and individuals who deal with a neurological condition called hydrocephalus. All of us in the office, board of directors, etc., are VOLUNTEERS. We do not hound those that contact us for help and information… we depend on contributions, donations, and grants. We help the unborn to the elderly… and all of those in between. A grant from Intuit would be GREATLY appreciated!
For clairification, are the contest winners selected from votes/comments for businesses located in all states or in separate areas? For example, does Ohio have it’s own contest separate from other states or are all votes from all states combined into one drawing?
How are you guys handeling fraudulent submissions? Like the current #1 http://lovealocalbusiness.intuit.com/pulse who has very obviously done something strange with their votes to have about 20 of each person voting the same thing repeatedly and in just one day. I suspect if looking at time stamps with in an hour as well.
Hi Strat,
There’s a “report abuse” button next to each nomination for each business. Just click on that if a nomination seems fishy.
Jay B. (Intuit)
Does the business have to be already up and running to be nomanated for the contest?
Nope – you can be a startup who is loved by your community who wants to help you grow.
I think this is a great idea. We work so hard to make things happen and make a client or customers dream come true. Here at RMB Hospitality we strive for the community but we always run short of funding. Having an opportunity like this even if we dont win is a blessing and offers hope that things are possible. It’s also a way to see just how much your services are appreciated. Reading a lot of the comments caused me to cry because I was so happy and appreciative to the wonderful things said.
Will you have another contest this year – i just learned about this and will have limited time to get votes in 2 days-
Thanks
Cary, Yes, there will be a new competition starting at midnight tonight. This is the April – June competition. We’ll be posting the updated rules tonight. I suggest you do go ahead and nominate yourself today. We’ve had a winner who only had one vote before… maybe today is your lucky day. – Laura from Intuit
I entered the last contest for our business, do I need to renoimate our business for this new contest?
I want to make sure I am understanding the rules:
You must have a website & facebook along with the votes in order to win. Is there anything else I need to know about the contest.
How is the grant to be spent if won? Can we use it for operational or cogs?
As the owner of The Pipe Doctor Plumbing, Heating & Air Conditioning, Inc. located in Woodmere, NY, I am delighted to have the opportunity to nominate my business for this Intuit grant contest. I have already implemented a plan on getting all of our customers to vote by printing out the flyer to “Text2Vote” and adding the banner for my website. Only 4 days in, I can’t believe we already have over 200 votes! If my company is the winning business, this grant will help fund our “Heating Fund” where we help those with their gas heating bills during the winter or those who are unable to repair their heating systems due to repair costs. Last year, we donated over $2,500 and hopefully this winter if the economy does not get better we can multiply that amount many times over!
This is Laura from Intuit. Our policy at Intuit is that we will remove comments that may be interpreted as an attack on another participant. As such, I will be removing some of the comments that were posted yesterday.
With regards to the questions about what is allowed and what is not: We do no allow automated voting for the Love a Local Business Contest. We continually monitor and contact participants if their votes are in question. If anyone has any concerns about the rules of the contest or how things are handled, please contact us at lovealocalbusiness@intuit.com. Thank you all for your understanding.
Thank you Laura! I had no intent of “attack.” I was just questioning the validity of the process and some obvious voting irregularities and brought them to light, which I think is a valid concern. Once again thank you for the contest. I only care about the integrity of the competition.
Anonymous – Yes, I understand. We are constantly monitoring the votes coming in and making sure that the contest’s integrity is upheld. I completely believe that everyone on here is acting with the best intent. I’m glad to hear that you like the contest.
Donna – Yes, you do need to renominate yourself. The new contest period runs from April – June. You do not need to have a website or Facebook page to win. You DO need to be a small business though. That’s it! Enjoy and good luck.
Thank you Laura for your assistance.
I don’t see votes from people who have told me that voted. How long does it take votes to show up?
When will the March winner be determined?
Hi Michael,
Thanks for your interest. We announced the March winner two weeks ago in this post. Good luck in April.
Jay B. (Intuit)
The official rules says: I have to “OWN” the company at the time of the entry means the company needs to be an LLC, S Corporation, INC etc? Needs to be in papers?
Thanks!
CashCow Ent is honored to have been voted for, thanks to all current employee’s and for the community support that has created and inspired me to start a business that allows me to employ enough people to end unemployment.
hello i have a question, i started this competition like 3 days ago will i lose my votes at the end of april or will they be saved for the next month i didn’t know about this contest till 3 days ago
Thank you for your time
Hi Abril,
I encourage you to read the Love a Local Business FAQ, “How are the winners of the Love A Local Business small business grants selected?” on this page. Votes in April will carry over to our May and June contests. Good luck!
Jay B. (Intuit)
Thank you so much Jay!!! :)
I accidentally reported abuse on one of my own comments i didn’t mean to i was scrolling down with the mouse to look at the new votes is that bad :( im sorry, i hope it doesn’t get removed
Voted for my choice, but the facebook link to brag gets an invalid session id,… and twitter seemed to work (no error) but doesn’t seem to show up as a tweet.
It would appear as though your link for the “text to vote” is down. How can this be corrected?
Abril – No problem – I’ll let the team know not to remove that vote.
Mark and TB – Yes, we are aware of those two issues. They seem to be effecting a very small group of folks, so the team is working on figuring out what’s going on. I’ll respond again as soon as I have an answer. Sorry for the inconvenience!
Laura from Intuit
I was wondering if I should hit “report abuse” on all the ones that I know someone is just putting things on my company voting page. For example: I saw some that were recently done that had all letters and no words. I am not sure why people would do that but, it is obvious that is not someone that really wants to vote for your company.
Your FAQs mention ‘guest judges’. Sounds like these aren’t employees of Intuit, yes? Could you give us an idea of where you typically get your judges?
Hi Nakia,
Yes, if you see abusive, spammy, or invalid votes, please use the “report abuse” feature. For more details, read the answer to the question on this page entitled, “Help! Someone posted a negative comment about my business. How do I remove it?”
Best wishes,
Jay B. (Intuit)
As the owner of 5 Starr Income Tax Service, I would like to say thank you for having a competition like this to offer a grant to a small business. I think it is a GREAT opportunity because you can see what your fans love about your company as well as what people may not like. In my opinion, it is great way to learn what your company can keep doing to provide great service to the community which is what 5 Starr loves to do. And because we are expanding into other towns, it is a great way to see what we can do better to offer to the new clients. Thanks again for the opportunity!
I am very excited about the contest. I need to change the address for my business. How do I do this. I didn’t realize people would be searching for the business by location. I have 2 locations and the address I used is one that people are not familiar with.
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Hello, I was wondering if this contest has ended? Is it to late to enter?
Hi,
I nominated a local home daycare business today. Did not realize that the email sent out also shows the complete address.
Is there some privacy setting that can hide the number and street address?
-Madhulika
We are a new website with a brick and mortar store only 5 days each month. We sell hand painted children’s furniture and toddler beds. The very young get excited because they know this store belongs to them and when forced to leave, many times are crying as they go out the door. The grandparents grin from ear to ear with delight, trying to grasp everything, wishing many times they could buy multiple items. I thrive on the happiness and delight everyone seems to experience as they enter our store. We may not receive many votes due to our newness but sure do need to win this contest!!
I am really excited about this contest – it has been a great “Team Building” exercise for my staff as they are working to secure votes from our clients. Thank you for sponsoring it!
A couple of issues that we have had, we were scrolling through the comments section and accidently hit the Report Abuse button on our last listing. Is there any way to correct our error? We also had quite a few clients who have texted in votes that have not shown up on our listing. Should we be concerned?
Thanks again
I have reviewed the Official Rules, and still cannot find an explanation of what a “hiring grant” requires, includes or involves. Can you help with that?
Thanks, Cat
Tried entering our company info in many times, and it does not show up in the search results. Only letting people do manual nominations when visiting the site.
To “love” a nonprofit organization, who signs up as the Business Owner – the Exec. Director, the Founders, ?? … OR does EVERYONE simply sign in as FANS?
As a small business in a small town in California, we feel blessed that a company like Intuit is offering help and support of businesses just like ours. We are getting ready to celebrate our 20th Anniversary in Business and would love nothing more than to be able to give back to our community, the families, and the children we inspire everyday. With this grant we would be able to do so much, including purchase equipment to help improve training, give these children the best environment to grow in. It’s not just gymnastics, cheer, acrobatics, dance, tumbling, trampoline, karate, or movement we teach, we build a foundation for life.
Our concern, is that we have two business listings now. Our original business listing with almost 99 postings now for May and June is Central Coast Gymnastics Sports Center, Inc. But I just noticed we have 2 postings under Central Coast Gymnastics Training Center. Can you please take down the listing for Central Coast Gymnastics Training Center and put the two postings under our original listing: Central Coast Gymnastics Sports Center, Inc.
We truly appreciate the opportunity to win one of these amazing grants. Thanks to all our wonderful customers, we are in the running for June. Our business is serving the children of our community, and we LOVE what we do. Just come see us!
So excited about this contest! Thanks for making it available. One small problem — when I posted the link to my Facebook page, the automatically generated link for folks to vote at isnt working. Is there a way to fix that?
Thanks!
Hi there,
I understand that the fanminder service is free, but are the texts free for my fans? Or does their company charge them a fee for texting?
Hi All,
If you’ve read the above FAQs and still have questions, please email them to Lovealocalbusiness@intuit.com. Thanks and good luck!
Jay B. (Intuit)
I have to say AGAIN that I think this is a great competition to learn what people like or dislike about your business. It gives you the opportunity to improve or to keep doing the great job you may be doing. I learned my fans “love” the fact that I appreciate them & give back to the community. From being in the May competition, I learned alot about what they “love” & we have a event coming up in July where we will be giving out FREE school supplies to the kids in the community. Since my fans “love” the way we support the community, I decided to keep it up. Because of this competition I know what my fans want and what they are looking for. THANKS AGAIN!!!
Glad to hear it, Nakia. Good luck!
Greetings! Just entered my company today & after doing so could not find it in the search for voting. My clients know my company by several names.. the primary names typically used are XL4U and XLDesign4U. I sent an email requesting that the names be merged ( in addition to additional derivatives of the company nomenclature) to LoveALocalBusiness@Intuit.com this afternoon. I posted the banner on my Facebook page & already got some likes, but worry that the actual voting will be clumsy for voters if my company does not come up in the “vote for a company” search. Can you help me? Thank you
I am having the same problem as Lori Brooks. My business is registered. It is not populating when a fan enteres the business name. Also, it isn’t even in the list to select from. Many of my clients say they have posted votes but I only see 6 when I do manage to find me. I want to participate in this contest.
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What does a $25,000 Hiring Grant mean? Does the money have to be used to hire employees?
Thank you for running such a generous contest. This can really help a small business grow. I entered my small business but have noticed a few small issues with the application. Sometimes when voting the application throws an error. It seems to happen most often in IE9 and least in FireFox. It usually goes away if you refresh.
Anyway, thanks again giving back to the small business community.
Dennis
where did my post go? I asked why my fans votes weren’t showing up. Also, I noticed the #1 company in the contest right now has many votes from the same person!!! Will those count?? How do you edit that???
I received an e-mail from Intuit about the small business grants. I phoned the number given before I entered the contest for my employer, a recreation center. The lady I talked to, Pauline, knew nothing about it. After three days of calls and faxes back and forth, she assured me it was a phishing scam and asked me to forward the e-mail to Intuit so they could try it track it down. Now, this week, I have time to check the Intuit website and find out it is entirely legitimate, but it is now past the deadline. I suggest you inform your people so that they are a little more up on your programs. I will check next year to see if the program is available and apply earlier. Discouraged.
Lori and Florrie – We’ve seen a small percentage of people that are having the same issue. But, I assure you that the votes are being counted! Please do send an e-mail to the lovealocalbusiness@intuit.com address so that they can fix the issue for you.
Ashlea – We do have systems in place to ensure that duplicate votes get deleted. Sometimes it does require some investigation on our part, so that can take a few days. I can’t comment on any specific user, but rest assured that we do have processes and systems in place.
Judy – I’m so sorry about the confusion. That is great feedback. We have tried to inform all of our employees about the grant competition, but clearly, not everyone has heard. We will recommunicate the competition across our employee base to make sure that the message gets out. Also, the good news is that the competition is NOT over. Yes, the June competition is complete… but the July-September contest period is open and active. Please do nominate yourself on LoveALocalBusiness.com so that you can be eligible for the $250k in grants that we have available for this contest period.
We just entered our business today July 11, 2011. Is it too late to enter and get friends and family and customers to vote for us?
also I want to change the main comment about what we do on our intial signup how do I do that?
I want to register my business. The $25,000 grant is called a Hiring Grant. I can’ t find if there are conditions for use of the money. How can I find this information.
I nominated my business and when i logged on today and read over what I put I don’t like how it is worded, is there any way I can edit the response I put before I send it to my fans to vote on?
Thanks
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Would like to vote for zaxbys because I really enjoy the food the clean restaurant and the everyone is rather friendly
I voted for:
Brewbaker’s Restaurant
Winchester, VA
I want to nominate a business for the competition. However, can others outside of this business social network group view the business information, such as the comments provided by the business during the nomination registration process?
I have changed adresses and there are currently three pages that come up voting .
johnathan andrew sage, Inc
johnathan andrew sage designs
johnAthan andrew sage McKinney
how do I merge theses as to sot separate voting results?
Hi Jonathan,
You came to the right page. Please read the answer to the question that begins, “There are two (or more) listings for my business with different spellings.”
Best wishes,
Jay B. (Intuit)
Hi Sophorn,
Yes, the nominations are all public and listed together for each business.
Jay B. (Intuit)
The city name for my listing is spelled incorrectly. How do I change that? It’s not showing up under the other city listings because of it. Correct spelling is Lawrenceville (GA) Also, when/where do we see who won the July contest? Why did my number of votes recently decrease?
Thanks,
Mary Beth Frasier
I thought votes rolled over from July to August and then August to Sept. Do I have to get everyone to vote again this month? I thought I understood how this works, but what I read and what I see one the Pulse are confusing. Is there somewhere I can see our total number of votes other than the Pulse?
Not that I want to have less votes – but I notice some of the fans of my business were having a hard time posting their votes, and because of that ended up accidentally voting twice. While I’d love to keep them there, I’m a fair woman :)
Wasn’t sure where to post to make the problem known. Thanks!
What if the business only have a small amount of customers (personal training, massage etc.) and just starting out so they are still building a clientele base, how can they get more votes compare to a place that caters to hundreds of customers?
Is this considered when choosing a winner? Just wondering:-)
Our business address is a home address and now that I’ve completed the nomination I see that everyone can see the address. I don’t know how to edit it now and if I can what do you suggest I put for an address?
I see where you have the text to vote instructions. But I can not seem to find the step by step instructions for e mail to vote. Please let me know. Thank you.
Hello,
Thanks much for this opportunity! I can’t find where it states what the grant can be used for. Is it only to hire employees or can it be used for equipment etc.
Thanks!
I have set up and sent messages out for my customers to vote for me on Txt2Vote but it is not working for any of them. It works fine for me when I do it but have worked with a bunch of my customers to do it and they get no reply or anything and it is not posting to my profile. Please help so I do not loose these votes and look stupid to my customers who are trying to help my company out.
Mary Beth – The votes roll over from July to August and July / August to Sept. Then, a new contest period will start in Oct.
Brianne – No worries! We remove duplicate votes.
Danny – The winner is chosen by random selection so that small companies have a chance!
Michelle – We ask that you use the grants to promote job growth, but the actual use of the grant is up to you!
Rob / Christine / Jodi – Please e-mail lovealocalbusiness@intuit.com to get help with your specific situations. Thanks!
Laura
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What if the business only have a small amount of customers
Hi Mary,
Each vote gives you a chance to win, and some of our past winners had only a very small number of votes. Good luck!
Jay B. (Intuit)
Are start-up businesses allowed to participate in this contest or does the business already have to be established?
Hi Sherod,
Yes, start-ups are definitely allowed! Good luck!
Thanks,
Pamela
Intuit
Hey! I am not sure if I understand the rules. If I nominate a business as a fan, does the owner still have to nominate themselves to be considered for the grant?
The company has to be under 200 employees?
And if the business has two locations under one business entity can it be counted that way for the contest?
Thanks!
Charlene
Hi Charlene!
Yes, the owner still does need to nominate his or her business using the business owner link in order to qualify to win the grant, and the business needs to have fewer than 200 employees.
If a business has two locations, they can each be nominated.
Thanks,
Pamela at Intuit
When we went in to vote for October 2011 our business was not listed so we registered again. Now we have two listings and our fans are voting on the September log instead of the October log. Will the new votes on the september log be counted for the October contest?
Hi Lindy,
I’ve merged the other listing to your original, so this is the link that you should be directing your fans to: http://lovealocalbusiness.intuit.com/business/Stand-For-The-Silent/266409
Since October kicked off a new contest period, votes have been reset. September votes do not count toward this contest period (October – December).
Check the Winner’s Playbook to make sure you are using the right text number as well – it should be the same one you were using before.
Thanks,
Pamela at Intuit
Thank you so much for this opportunity to win this grant. It has been a blessing to us to see and read the positive comments from the families that we serve. How long does it take to announce the winner from the previous month? Just curious!!! Once again Intuit…thank you!
We accidentially have two accounts for the LoveALocalBusiness contest that are receiving votes. Can you please combine these accounts to reduce confusion for our voters? We would greatly appreciate your assistance with this request.
The Wishing Well – Harrisonburg, VA
Thank you,
Terrie A. Dean, Owner
I added/voted for my business manually yesterday, but it still is not showing up if someone looks for it. Did I do something incorrectly, or is there lag time? Thanks.
@Terrie: I was glad I spoke with Harry yesterday and resolved the duplicate listings!
@Tina: It may take some time, but you can always point your fans directly to your page to vote here: http://lovealocalbusiness.intuit.com/pages/fan?b_id=293352 (Check the Winner’s Playbook for more tips on how to get votes!)
@Pamela – Thanks so much!
An additional question – I’ve noticed that a couple of fans have put in my business name instead of their own. What happens with those votes?
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What happens if the people that voted for your company dont respond to the confirmation email you send out.
Our members are voting, the banner we put on our website is reflecting new votes but the ‘Top Ten Businesses’ totals have not changed in over a week? What’s going on?
I made a spelling mistake when I submitted the response to the question “why we love to serve our customers, etc.” How can I fix it?
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I haven’t seen the numbers move on the leader-board in 2 weeks. I see the leader with 267 votes! is this right?
Hi All! It does look like The Pulse may not always display the most up-to-date number of votes. We are looking into it.
Adil, feel free to re-submit your nomination. If you would like to remove the nomination with the spelling error, please report the post or email lovealocalbusiness@intuit.com with the nomination date and message.
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Hi we are doing an event and people are trying to vote for us but our name is not showing up even though it has in the past (we have 35 votes) how can we fix this?
I have had many clients and colleagues tell me that they have voted via text. In some cases I have shown them on their phones how they can show their support, however, these votes are not showing up, they do not show up as fans and their comments are not showing up either. It would seem that we are losing votes somewhere.
I have waited a few days to see if they will post but with no luck. Getting the word out to have people vote is work enough, but getting them to vote twice would prove difficult. Is there any advice that you can offer?
Are international customers allowed to vote? And if so how do they do so?
Thanks!
@Anna
It looks like you submitted a manual nomination, which takes time to show up in the search. However, you should be able to use the link provided in the Winner’s Playbook to send to your fans so they can get to your voting page directly. However, since you’ve set up your business twice, you have two voting pages with different addresses. Which one should we keep?
http://lovealocalbusiness.intuit.com/pages/fan?b_id=293460 (Dell Ave)
http://lovealocalbusiness.intuit.com/pages/fan?b_id=295695 (Florence Way)
@Adrian
I see that about 42 out of your 54 votes are from text. They do show up in our vote lists, but I’ll look into why they do not appear on your page.
@Melissa
Your international customers are able to vote directly from the voting page of your website. Thanks!
I just found out about this. Is it too late for me to enter, even if I work freakishly hard to get votes in the last 2 weeks of this month? Please let me know. Thanks.
Hi Lynn,
Not at all! It’s not too late to start – after all, it’s not about getting the most votes since your votes will be part of a drawing.
Thanks,
Pamela
I would love a grant for $25,000.00. pleas e-mail me a form.
Hi Clyde,
That’s great! To apply, nominate your business at LoveALocalBusiness.com.
Thanks,
Pamela
I just learned about this contest. It’s pretty late in the game. Is it worth entering at this late date or would it be better to wait for your next contest? Can a business enter your contests more than once?
Thanks for your help.
@Gail – Since the winner is picked through a drawing, it’s never “too late” to participate! I would definitely go ahead and nominate your business. Just know that the votes and nominations are reset at the end of the month so you and/or your fans would need to re-vote in the new contest period if you want to participate in both contest periods. Thanks, and good luck!
Hi,
I just wonder how the winner selection is working ? is it completely random or do you pick manually a specific company at the end ?!
Looking at all of your winners so far there’s almost no one from your top pulse list or from top 10 business is a winner !!! , some winners has only as low as 25 votes :-) , while the business who has 1000 votes or more aren’t winner !!!
Are you sure that you follow a random selection for the winners ?!!!!!!
If anyone familiar with probability science, they will now that your contest winners don’t make any kind of sense according to this science’s formulas , considering that you have almost 1000 nominees on average !!!!!
Please explain … !!!!
Thanks!
Hi Marcil,
Thanks for your note. Winners are selected randomly by ePrize, our contest administrator. While greater fan votes increases the odds of a business being selected, the process is random and doesn’t guarantee that the business with the highest votes will win.
Thanks,
Betsy
I want my Buis. to be removed from this, How do I go about it?
How often do you all do these competitions? Thanks for playing such an important role for small businesses!
-Tina
@Pat
Hi Pat, would you please clarify what you would like to remove your business from?
@Tina
Hi Tina, we’ve been giving away grants on a monthly basis for several months. The goal of the program is to recognize small busineses for the important role they play in their communities and who better to do it than their customers?! Glad you like the program.
Thanks,
Betsy
Im looking for a grant to prototype eight way lug wrench
Who supplies the grant money?
I’m trying to print out a banner/print media piece that I’ve accessed before to let customers know about the lovealocalbusiness contest and I can’t get that part of your site to work. Any suggestions?
@April
Intuit supplies the grant money, ePrize administers the program.
@Rachel
The banner ads are to be placed on your website or your social network site. I don’t believe they are optimized to be printed. Please let me know if this helps answer your question.
Thanks!
Betsy
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Hello,
Is this contest still running ?!
Any updates about January’s winners ?!
Thanks
@ Marcil
Hi Marcil, the winner of the January contest period has not been selected yet. ePrize will be selecting the winners in the coming week. Stay tuned and look out for the blog post under the “Recent Grant Winners’” list.
Thanks,
Betsy
I was under the impression that the competition was quarterly and that votes carried over from January to February to March. I was basing off of last quarter. Is this wrong? I hope not. I’ve been telling all my clients that it was a quarterly competition and only one vote was needed. Thanks! ~ Jamie
Hi Jamie,
The rules for January specified that the contest period ran from January 1-January 31st.
Thanks,
Betsy
This being 2/7/12, and the January contest is over, when will the next one be? Also, are there stipulations on how the money is used? I think one of the early contests said something about using it for hiring… what if one needs the money simply to “get off the ground”?
Thanks.
Hi Will,
Thank you for your interest in the Love A Local Business Contest. The January contest is over and the winner was just announced! There is a new contest that started on February 1st. To learn more about the contest and how the grant can be used, please see the official rules section.
Thanks,
Betsy
How do I stop the Twitter message “Vote for my business to help us win a $50k hiring grant.. ” from playing every three days on my Twitter acct? I wouldn’t mind putting a message in now and then but this has taken over our whole Twitter look.