Class Reunion Planning 101 (High School or College Reunions)

Your database, preferably a spreadsheet, should be comprised of information that is useful to you. You will use it time and again to send emails and snail mails to your classmates. It will also become the "master" list to check in classmates at the door on the big day. Each piece of information should be a separate "field" and will be searchable if necessary. Our fields were created based on the survey questions we asked. However, once we started collecting money from classmates, new fields were added. This is a sampling of the fields we used. Feel free to add your own. ATTENDANCE - MARK UPON ARRIVAL AT REUNION HIGH SCHOOL LAST NAME HIGH SCHOOL FIRST NAME CURRENT NAME EMAIL ADDRESS PHONE # HOME STREET ADDRESS CITY STATE ZIP COUNTRY PHONE # STATUS (L,F,D) VOLUNTEER (JOB) (from survey) ATTENDING (Y, N) HOW MANY TO ATTEND? HOW MUCH PAID? (AMOUNT) If you have others you would recommend. Please add them as a comment.

Once the survey results are back and your search teams starts finding people, you need to put the information you collect somewhere. A Microsoft Excel spreadsheet is an excellent tool if one person is doing all the data entry. But there are other online options which function much like an Excel spreadsheet that a number of "invited" people can use either simultaneously or individually to enter data "live." That means that several of you can share the database and enter data all at the same time. It saves itself. The shared database we use for our reunion is called Zoho Sheet, one of many Zoho offerings available for free at http://www.zoho.com/ . You can create, edit and access your spreadsheets from anywhere. And no installation is required. It allows for collaborative editing of spreadsheets where multiple users can work on a spreadsheet simultaneously . You can import existing Excel spreadsheets and also export your Zoho Sheet to Excel spreadsheets for...