Is Baby of the Year a Scam? A Former Semifinalist Breaks Down the Truth
Is Baby of the Year a Scam? A Former Semifinalist Breaks Down the Truth
The first time I saw the question on Reddit, it was 2024. A parent in the r/NewParents community had posted a warning. She had signed her daughter up, gotten the finalist notification within hours, and immediately wondered if something was wrong. The post got over 1,300 upvotes.
I was deep in that contest at the time. My son Julian had entered Baby of the Year, and we had made it all the way to the semifinals. I was not a bystander asking whether this was real. I was inside it.
So when parents ask me today whether Baby of the Year is a scam, I do not give them a defensive answer or a promotional one. I give them the same answer I would want if I were in their position before entering: the full picture, including the parts that are legitimately confusing, the parts that are genuinely worth being skeptical about, and the parts that have been blown completely out of proportion online.
Here is what I actually know.
Why So Many Parents Ask This Question
Let me start with the reason this question exists at all, because understanding it matters.
Baby of the Year is run by Colossal Management, LLC — a Delaware-registered for-profit professional fundraising company. The contest is not run by Good Housekeeping. Good Housekeeping has no editorial involvement. Neither does Jessica Alba, who is associated with Baby2Baby (the designated charity for the contest) but is not an operator of the competition itself.
That distinction — between who runs the contest and who is mentioned in the marketing around it — is the source of a significant amount of confusion online.
Parents see the contest advertised with celebrity names and magazine associations and assume those entities have vetted and endorsed the competition in a meaningful way. When they later discover that Good Housekeeping's involvement amounts to a paid advertising relationship rather than an editorial endorsement, they feel misled. That feeling is understandable. It is also a consistent pattern in how Colossal markets its contests, and it has generated real criticism that the company has never fully addressed publicly.
But confusion and disappointment are not the same as fraud. So let me go through each specific claim you are likely seeing online.
Claim 1: Everyone Gets Selected — It Has to Be a Scam
What the notification actually means
This is the most common complaint and it has a simple factual explanation.
When you submit your entry and receive the notification that your baby has been selected to compete, that notification is real. It is not a fake hook designed to pull you in. But it also does not mean your baby was hand-picked from thousands of entries.
Here is how it actually works.
Colossal selects which entrants move forward as competitors at their sole discretion, as stated in the official contest rules.
The company then divides competitors into groups and advances them through progressive voting rounds. Each group contains a small number of contestants — often five to ten babies. Within your group, your ranking is displayed on your profile.
This means a baby who is ranked first in their group of eight is genuinely ranked first inside that specific group while potentially being much further back when measured against the total pool of all competitors nationwide.
Why everyone appears to be in first place
When your friends are all posting that their baby is in the top five, they are almost certainly all telling the truth about their group ranking. The structure makes this possible because every group has a top five, and every group has a first place.
This is not deception in a criminal sense. But it is a structural transparency issue that Colossal has never clearly communicated in their public-facing materials. If you go into the contest knowing this, it changes how you interpret your rankings and how you approach your strategy.
Claim 2: You Have to Buy Votes to Win — That Is Pay to Play
What paid votes actually are
This claim appears on Reddit, TikTok, and in multiple news investigations including a 2024 report by the Action News Troubleshooters at 6ABC Philadelphia that specifically looked into whether Baby of the Year was a scam.
The short answer is that you do not have to pay anything to enter or to cast free daily votes. The contest rules state explicitly that no purchase or payment of any kind is necessary to enter or win.
Here is what the paid vote structure actually is.
Every dollar that supporters donate through the Baby of the Year platform goes directly to DTCare, a registered 501(c)3 public charity. DTCare then grants those funds to Baby2Baby — a national nonprofit that provides diapers, clothing, and basic necessities to children living in poverty across the country.
Is the charity legitimate?
Yes. Baby2Baby holds a four-star rating on Charity Navigator with an accountability and finance score of 97.
The organization has distributed over 500 million essential items to children in need over the past fifteen years and serves over one million children annually. When your aunt donates $20 through your contest profile, she is casting 20 additional votes for your baby and simultaneously making a tax-deductible charitable contribution to a highly rated nonprofit.
The fee disclosure
The contest rules disclose that donations go to DTCare with fees of 36.5 percent and variable costs deducted before the remaining funds reach Baby2Baby. That fee structure is worth knowing before you enter. It is published in the rules and is not hidden.
The parent self-vote rule
One rule that surprises many parents: the parent who enters their baby is not permitted to donate or cast votes by donation for their own child. Grandparents, aunts, uncles, and friends can donate. The parent who submitted the entry form cannot. This is disclosed in the rules.
Claim 3: There Was a Lawsuit — That Proves It Is a Scam
What the lawsuit was actually about
There was a real lawsuit. But the facts are significantly different from how they are typically described online.
In June 2021, a class action was filed against Crow Vote LLC — a company associated with an earlier Colossal contest called Favorite Chef — in Orange County Superior Court. The plaintiffs argued that the paid vote structure constituted an illegal lottery because contestants could pay for an advantage toward winning a prize.
The court found that the contest did not constitute unlawful gambling and that contestants received exactly what they paid for. The case was dismissed.
What claims have no supporting evidence
The Favorite Chef lawsuit is the only verified legal action against Colossal Management or its associated entities. There is no documented ongoing criminal investigation. There is no verified RICO prosecution. Claims connecting Colossal to firearms trafficking, government contracts, or organized crime have appeared on social media and video platforms but are not supported by any documented evidence and should be treated as unverified speculation.
Claim 4: The Facebook Vote Groups Are Part of the Scam
Two completely different problems
This is the claim I feel most strongly about because it conflates two separate things.
The scammer-managed Facebook groups soliciting Baby of the Year contestants — promising guaranteed vote packages, vote boosting services, or first-place guarantees in exchange for payment — have nothing to do with Colossal Management. The Baby of the Year official rules explicitly state that Colossal does not monitor or control off-site activity via social media or third-party platforms.
These Facebook groups are run by independent bad actors who exploit contestant anxiety. They are not affiliated with the contest. Using their services almost certainly violates the contest rules and risks disqualification.
If you have been approached by someone in a Facebook group offering to boost your baby's votes for a fee, that is the scam. The contest itself is a completely separate matter.
What I Experienced Competing From the Inside
My son Julian and I entered Baby of the Year and made it to the semifinals. Our campaign was covered by Boston 25 News. I felt every round of pressure that every parent competing in this contest feels — the anxiety at the end of each Thursday cutoff, the confusion when our ranking shifted, the relief when we advanced and the disappointment when we eventually did not.
What I can tell you from that experience is that the contest worked exactly as described in the publicly available rules. The rounds ran on schedule. The voting mechanics operated as documented. The pressure was real, but it was the pressure of legitimate competition — not manipulation.
What I can also tell you is that most of what makes this contest hard to navigate has nothing to do with whether it is a scam. It has to do with the fact that the mechanics are genuinely complex and most parents enter without understanding how the round structure, the voting windows, or the donation timing actually work.
Understanding those mechanics before your first round is exactly what separates the parents who advance from the ones who run out of time to figure it out. If you want to understand those mechanics before August 31st when voting begins, the free strategy training at Voting Academy covers what I wish I had known before Julian's first round.
So Is Baby of the Year a Scam? Here Is My Straight Answer
Baby of the Year is not a scam in the criminal sense. The organization running it is a registered legal entity. The charity receiving the donations holds a four-star Charity Navigator rating. The fee structure is publicly disclosed. The rules are available at babyoftheyear.org. A court examined a structurally identical contest from the same organization and found no unlawful activity.
What Baby of the Year is, legitimately, is confusing. The group ranking structure creates the impression that everyone is doing well when the overall competition is intense. The association with celebrity names creates an impression of endorsement that is not accurate. The paid vote mechanic is unusual enough that parents who have never encountered it before are reasonably suspicious when they first see it.
Those are legitimate criticisms of how the contest is marketed and structured. They are worth knowing before you decide to enter. But they are different from fraud.
If you are considering entering the 2026 Baby of the Year contest which begins August 31st, I would encourage you to read the official rules before entering, verify Baby2Baby directly through Charity Navigator if the charity component matters to you, and go in understanding that your group ranking is not the same as your overall standing in the full competition.
If you decide to compete, you can also read how the contest mechanics actually work in our guide to how Baby of the Year voting works.
About the Author
Omar Ruiz — Voting Academy
Omar Ruiz is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist and the founder of Voting Academy. He competed in Baby of the Year with his son Julian, reaching the semifinals. His campaign was covered by Boston 25 News. He built Voting Academy to give other parents the round-by-round strategy he did not have during his own contest run.
