My brother-in-law is a graphic artist (and architect). If I really wanted to scam the system, I would have paid the $39 listing fee, gotten lots of submissions, then canceled the contest, saved $250, and had my brother-in-law create something off of the best entry. Turns out my brother-in-law liked the winning logo the best, too.

Maybe Designerarts had "beginner's luck". :-)

Thanks again, everyone!

Sorry, I just saw the message from Angrypupply and ditto from RetroMetro. With a final tally of over 230 submmissions you can imagine it is hard to pick one and also be consistent in your thinking from one day to the next. One day (or hour) you look at a logo and see it one way, the next day or hour you have, perhaps, a different perspective. You guys/gals probably know this better than me since you are all working in the graphic arts field. Yes, there were many excellent entries, but as I got input from some trusted friends thoughts changed a bit here and there. My apologies if this doesn't make sense. With respect to the stars, I just figured 5 stars would be saved for the winner...thus the reason I maxed it out at 4 stars (I think). Again, many great entries and I thank everyone for a great effort.

Adding new comment 11/12/07 (forgot that I could add the comments here, so they are also in the 'Summary'): Thank you to everyone for all the great entries...very hard to narrow it down. After considering many options over the past few days let me provide some "updated" thoughts as a result of seeing the wide variety of logos submitted: I like the block/blocks to the left of the text, I have decided (for now) to go with a blue/grey or blue/silver or blue/white color scheme (at this point no longer interested in green/gold). I like a serif font for the word "Cornerstone". Also, please note that I have changed the company name to "Cornerstone Fundraising Solutions". This shouldn't be too much of a big deal as you can replace "Consulting Group" with "Fundraising Solutions". Since "fundraising" is now in the company name, I no longer need the tag line. From this point forward I will just rank the entries and will attempt to keep the top 5 to 8 and provide comments for those; others that are not in the top 5-8 will just be removed. If you would like comments, then just PM me. Thanks again to everyone for your submissions.

Added comment

My apologies for any confusion or not being clear enough. The primary concept to work with is the company name, "Cornerstone Consulting Group", the word "Cornerstone" (as being part of a foundation). "MaxFundraising" should not be part of the logo...that's just our web site name, but I don't plan to build the brand around that web site name. Again, my apolgies for any confusion...I'm learning how this contest thing works. You could also try to incorporate something around the idea of "fundraising" or "money" or the tag line of "Building Foundations for Fundraising Success". Thanks!