How to Build Your Search Committee

I had a funny email today from someone who tried to organize her grammar school's 50th reunion. After a year she said "we gave up. Everyone was either 1. dead 2. disappeared or 3. too dumb to open an email." So they had no reunion.

What follows are some thoughts about how to put together a team so that you can succeed in finding at least two of the three: the "disappeared" and the "dumb."

I mentioned earlier in one posting "Do It Yourself or Hire a Company?" how our search team was actually started by Steve, who was looking to build a database of people to build an audience for his singing duo "Steve and Steve." He had a vested interest in starting the list of found classmates, and found 250 of the 620 of them by himself.

Now assuming you don't have someone like Steve to jumpstart you, you would do well to build a core group of interested classmates about a year and half before the actual date.

You might want to get yourself a Gold Membership at http://www.classmates.com/
to find people from your class with whom you were friendly. Start with the easiest to find first - people you know - and think you can depend on.

I say think because the people who are closest to you are probably not going to wind up volunteering for your committee. (I don't know why it works out this way, but it usually does.) They will, however, tell you the whereabouts of other classmates who will work with you.

As you start talking to people, welcome them to join your team and put them to work. After a while, it will become clear who your most enthusiastic finders are.

As they find people, they should ask classmates "Who else are you in touch with?" and "Would you like to join our finding committee?" That's how your committee will grow.


Choose one computer saavy team leader be responsible for coordinating the whole team and entering contacts in the database and choose another to be the co-team leader. You will see right away if you chose the best person for the job. If they aren't finding people right away and actively managing the team, you may have made a mistake. If it that happens, let the co-team leader run with full responsibility and add a sub-deputy. Don't rely on people who really don't have the time to manage their teams. You'll lose precious time.

After a while, our finding committee grew to a loose team of about 50 people who communicated by email as a group. We discovered that certain people, about 5 of them, were consistently finding people, while the rest cheered us on, gave us leads, sent jokes and funny clips and planned little mini reunions around the country - all resulting in keeping our morale high.

Thus far we've uncovered 465 of our classmates out of 620. And with only a few months left, I expect a big push to start up again.

What ever you do, don't try to do it all by yourself unless you have a very small graduating class.

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