I have voted again. Ken

We'd like to thank everyone who voted. I have to sadly note that while it appears we made the top five, Mr. Markquart said that "a railroad museum wasn't the type of charity I had in mind for the donations" and we were dropped for consideration. I hope our western Wisconsin friends keep this comment in mind when they go to buy a car. A lot of hard work was wasted on a promotion that didn't keep its word.

That's really a lousy deal. Sad to hear that you got denied like that. Best of luck with your organization moving forward, though.

Herb -

Feel really bad for the Colfax Railroad Museum. Considering some of the other news coming out of Wisconsin these days, I guess it's not surprising. Was just up at the University of Wisconsin/Madison's Winter Commencement for for my grandsons graduation and ran into a lot of nice folks. But obviously there are others too. You guys have done a great job in the recent building up of the museum and I have faith you will be able to survive this disappointment.

Les

Wait...you made the top fie by popular vote and then were tossed out on a whim? Why bother to have a vote supporting a place to endorse with charitable funding? I hope somebody's Christmas stocking gets filled with stinky cheese, because boy, does that promotion stink!

Truly sorry to hear that. Seems like we're the unwanted bastard stepchild when it comes to charitable giving. Out of curiosity, did they state the type of organizations eligible in the rules?

I would suggest you "suggest" to them to reconsider their position, (you won, fair & square) before you tell your story to the local press. Just because the owner thinks "that's not where we want the donation to go" isn't cause to break the stated rules.

How did you find out that you were dropped? Can you prove you were droped and or in the top 5?

I had an in person discussion with Mr. Markquart and when I asked him where we had finished so that I could at least get an idea how well our campaign had performed, he went into a long spiel about how the vote totals and finish were confidential and that we didn't receive funding because he decided a railroad museum was not the type of charity he had intended to support. He wanted to support animals and social service type organizations.

If we hadn't been in the top five, he could have simply said we didn't get enough votes. We had some info on where the top vote getter was in midcampaign and the votes were slacking off substantially after the first week. We had a lot more than that at the end.