Class Reunion Planning 101 (High School or College Reunions)

I have learned a lot about reunion planning. It was several decades ago that I graduated from high school and was Secretary of the class. Somehow I knew, even back then, that I would be involved in planning the reunions. I deliberately never let anyone write in my yearbook, because I thought a "clean" version might be useful in the future. Little did I know that years later we would be photocopying it, and, today, scanning it, to make an online yearbook and name-tags. Every ten years I plan yet another reunion,  And each of them has brought forth a new set of challenges. In addition, new technologies have enhanced communication among classmates in ways that I never dreamed. In future updates, I will address many of tips I have discovered. I welcome everyone who has ever planned a reunion or been to a reunion to join me in this forum. Together we can help others who are grappling with the challenges of their reunions and share some fun stories at the same time.

Well, if not you, who else? I'm just saying, if the thought crossed your mind, then probably you're the one! But before you jump on board, be sure you can say "yes" to the following questions. 1. Are you sincerely interested in your classmates? Not that you have to communicate in detail with every last one of them, but are you interested in seeing them connect with each other? 2. Do you have an office at your disposal with a computer, access to the internet, knowledge to use it, fax, copier, and (ideally free) phone. These are all indispensible to being the point person. 3. Do you have an ability to delegate? You need to set up lines of communication and systems so that you understand how they work, and then teach others to do them, so things run smoothly. You do not have to do everything yourself - nor should you. 4. Are you organized? I am managing five teams of people: the search for lost classmates committee, the database team, the location finding team, the p...

I recently came across a New York Times blog called "Bits," written by a recent college grad, Jenna Wortham, who posed the question, "Who Needs a College Reunion? I've Got Facebook." http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/29/who-needs-a-college-reunion-ive-got-facebook/ . She was invited to her five-year reunion and adamantly stated that she had no intention of going because Facebook kept her up to date on each and every classmate she cared about. She knew who married who, what their children looked like, what gainful employment they had, what community groups they supported, and so on. And there's no doubt that she was keeping tabs on everyone that was important to her. But I have to extrapolate forward 10, 20, 30 years and wonder if she'll still feel the same way then? Somehow the passage of time, the frailty of the human body, and the growing nostalgia for days gone by takes its toll on our curiosity, and I believe she'll want to go back to se...

Another detail you'll want to review with your venue event manager is the floor plan. It's a mundane but essential part of making a successful party. The smooth flow of traffic is essential to keep a somewhat inebriated herd content. Here are ten floorplan "must-haves" to keep things running well: 1. two sign-in tables -usually in the foyer outside the main room for people to check in or pay if they haven't already. Consider splitting up the alphabet by last name - half at one table, half at the other. 2. name tag table - for people to pick up their pre -printed name tags or write their own if they paid at the door. 3. table for seating cards - if you have pre -assigned seating for your reunion (I don't recommend this), but if you do, people will need to pick up their table numbers outside the main room. Arrange the cards in alphabetical order by last name. 4. bar(s) -to avoid bottlenecks. Some places recommend 1 bartender per 100 people. Keep them away from ...

About a ten months before the reunion you should decide on where to have the reunion. Once that's decided, you'll need to figure out how much to charge for a reunion ticket so you can start selling tickets immediately. You will make the decision based on a number of factors: Basic Charges 1. Price per person for food. 2. Open bar vs. Cash bar 3. Tax and service charges _____________________________________ Say food is $50.00 cash bar is 0.00 Tax in NJ is 7% 3.50 Service Charge at our hotel is 21% = 10.50 ____________________________________ Price per person is: $64.00 So is that the amount you charge your classmates? NO!!!!! Because you have to take in account all the other costs involved in reunion planning Ancillary charges (try to get as much for free here as you can...

About a month before the reunion, you'll want to check in with the banquet manager and review the details of the menu, the layout of the room, the location of the bars, the check in tables and any special needs you may have like multi-media playback. Hotels will provide projection systems and screens for a price, (and not cheaply, I might add.) The specifics of the menu can change up to about a week before (double check this with your banquet manager,) but you'll want to make the initial choices a month before. Things to consider: 1.Long before you've planned the menu, you've decided on whether to have a Cash Bar vs. Open Bar or something in-between (maybe wine and beer only.) This is because the price you charge for reunion tickets a year before must reflect the cost of food and drinks, if you are not having a cash bar. Double check that soft drinks, juice and water are free. That said, I believe a cash bar is the fairest way to deal with alcoholic drinks since not e...

That is the question. Actually it's more than one question - because videos can serve several different purposes. You can create: 1. videos to entertain at your party 2. videos to document your party and/or 3. videos to inform classmates on your website or Facebook page First rule of video production: ask someone else to do it, if you are the class reunion planner. Canvas your classmates and see if anyone wants to handle it. Reunion planners like us have enough to do. Entertainment Think about starting your party with a video. Nothing is more exciting than launching the party with a great video with a rocking soundtrack. Consider editing the following elements together to make a short and sweet, 2-3 minute party tape: contemporary footage and old photos of your favorite haunts around town, pop culture and news footage from your decade, headlines from the town paper from the year you graduated, photos of classmates horsing around. Combine fast-paced cutting with favorite anthems...

Sometimes people are funny. They don't want to be the first to sign up to buy a ticket and would rather hedge their bets to see who of their friends have committed first. We've solved that problem by offering incentives to our classmates and, believe me, they work. 1. Most successful is the "early-bird special." Assuming you have started a whole year in advance. Offer people a discount for those who sign up in the first three months. We met our minimum number right off the bat and were breathing a whole lot easier. We promised the hotel a minimum of 125 people, and during the "early bird" phase we sold 124 tickets. Amazing how that worked. (This, of course presumes, that you have a margin of extra money to play with.) 2. Another phenomena that I didn't predict was the "free drink on me" incentive. Several classmates helped with the sign up drive by each offering to buy the next ten people who signed up a free drink at the reunion....

Why agonize about party favors for a class reunion? There are many ideas to kick around if you want to give everyone a little memento of the occasion . Make your decision based on the fact that a good percentage of them get left behind on the table. Why is that? It's mostly because people are milling around, saying a thousand good-byes at the end of the night. They are not at their tables, sitting like good little guests. They have long forgotten their goody bags or engraved mugs, and are probably too buzzed to care. That said, let's talk about some sweet ideas that don't cost too much. Our class had a lot of talented musicians who rocked out at the Battle of the Bands and the school dances. Some did covers. Others wrote their own songs. We are asking classmates to send music from their bands in any format to our engineering genius Larry. He's going to compress the music and put it out on a CD, and that will be our party favor, complete with a nice label. Again this req...

Lou posted a comment after the article Should I Be the One to Organize the Reunion? about all the fun activities he planned for the entire reunion weekend I agree. Why limit the reunion to four hours on a Saturday night? Make an entire weekend of it, making it especially worthwhile for those who have traveled a great distance and may be staying in the hotel. Here are some ideas to extend the festivities: 1. A Friday night pre-party bash. It could be simply drinks at the hotel lounge or a pot-luck picnic at a local picnic grove. Perhaps you'll want to get together at a local hangout of 'yore. Create a simple "pay as you go" experience for those who wish to attend. No reservations. No money collected in advance. Keep it simple and have fun. 2. Saturday morning. Be creative. Plan a golf outing, a hike, a basketball pickup game at the courts, a brunch, a trip to the zoo or a botanical garden. Small groups can assemble for inexpensive get-togethers. Find creative, inexpen...

A contract is a legally binding agreement between you and the venue, be it a hotel, a restaurant, a resort, a caterer or other organization that's providing services . You will be committing to pay for "x" number of people at "y" price. If your contract specifies a minimum number of people that you guarantee, then you will be responsible to pay for that number. So if our minimum is 125 people and only 100 show up, the signer(s) of the contract is/are responsible for paying for those 25 people. At say, $50.00 a head, that would be $1250.00 you would still owe the venue. You don't have to pay tax for those 25 people, nor the tip (as much as 21%) on those 25 people. But you do have to come up with $1250.00 This is why negotiating to lower the minimum number of people to hold the room is very important. Now suppose you have a reunion planned and a contract signed and for some unforeseeable reason you have to cancel it. Well guess what? You are still responsibl...

Your contract with your venue represents an agreement between the you (or your team) and the facility/venue. It outlines the specific conditions and services to be provided. Most contracts are negotiatiable so think of it as a "work in progress" that can be changed and adapted based on several conversations with your Event Sales Manager. And keep in mind that during these times of economic uncertainty, venues are tending to be very flexible. The idea is to create terms with which both sides are happy. So don't feel like you have to sign the very first document they put in front of you. I remember our last contract went through about 5 revisions back and forth before we signed. The following are points that can be negotiated: 1. The rate and the number of hotels rooms that will be held as a block for the classmates. Go for the lowest price you can and compare the price to other hotels in the area. The more rooms you can hold the better, depending on how large your class si...

The place for the reunion is much more than a box to house "x" number of people for a party. Think about the following when you choose your location. 1. Keep your location relatively close to your school location, say within 20 miles. 2. Consider the advantage of having the reunion in a hotel that can accommodate people before, during and after the party. This is particularly helpful for classmates coming from a distance. 3. While the room isn't going to make or break the party, be aware of dingy lighting, run down appearances and by all means, check out the rest rooms to make sure they meet your expectations . 4. If you expect to serve liquor and food, make sure the menu suits your needs and don't forget that tax and gratuities must be added to the price per person. 5. Does that hotel offer other venues for getting together? Bars/pubs/lounges for Friday night. Restaurant services for brunches in the morning. You may want to schedule a whole weekend of activities ce...

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...

Tell the world about your reunion. There are so many channels to publicize it. 1. Tell your friends about progress using social networking sites: Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, etc. 2. Create a special "high school reunion group" on these sites and invite your friends to it and update it with basic reunion information. 3. Place notices in your local newspaper. 4. Write op-ed pieces for larger newspapers. Perhaps an article about the significance of your reunion as related to the social climate now vs. then - or something like that. 5. Write a notice for your community access television station about the reunion: date, place, time. 6. Take advantage of any media outlets classmates might have. We actually were on the Today Show with Al Roeker talking to him on national tv about the reunion, thanks to our classmate who was director of the show. 7. Send regular email blasts to found classmates on your list. 8. Create a website with reunion information, (more on this later.) 9. Adver...

Once we gathered a respectable number of email addresses for classmates, we put out a survey to all of them to gather detailed contact information and to collect preferences about the reunion. There are many online survey businesses on the web that are relatively inexpensive if you Google "online surveys." We used http://www.surveymonkey.com/ "Intelligent survey software for primates of all species." SurveyMonkey has a single purpose: to enable anyone to create professional online surveys quickly and easily. You design your own survey and select from over a dozen types of questions, (multiple choice, rating scales, drop-down menus, and more...). View Example Survey Their basic service is free, but limited to only 100 responses a month. We chose the Monthly Pro option paying a monthly fee of $19.95 for only as long as we used it. There is also an unlimited, more expensive option. Here's is a sample of what our survey said: We have good, up-to-date email addresse...

Give yourself enough time to make smart decisions. Allow: Build your committees - 1 1/2 years Start building the database of classmates - 1 1/2 years Prepare and send out your survey - 1 1/2 years Start looking for a venue - 1 year 2 months Start building your website - 1 year 2 months Book the venue/ sign contract - 1 year Block rooms at a local hotel - 1 year Open a bank account w/ checking - 1 year Start selling tickets on website & mail - 1 year Offer discounts to early birds 1 year - 8 months Hire DJ/Band/Entertainment - 8 months Launch the decorations committee - 8 months Buy/make party favors - 6 months Start planning retrospective video - 6-4 months Hire video co. to document party - 6 months Hire photographer - 6 months Make nametags - 2 months Plan &/or build centerpieces - 2 months Plan other activities on that weekend - 2 months Seating arrangements if desired - 2 months Plan menu - 1 month These are approximate start times. If you haven't allowed yourself enou...

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...

Fancy, Formal? Casual, Relaxed? What kind of reunion do you want to attend? Be creative in your brainstorming. Here are just a few ideas: 1. a picnic grove 2. a classmates large house 3. A tent in the backyard 4. a country resort 5. a local pub 6. the school cafeteria or student center 7. a local restaurant 8. a city nightclub 9. a boat cruise 10. and, our choice this year, a ballroom at a fancy hotel. We chose the hotel for a number of reasons: 1. We wanted to decorate minimally and still have a beautiful place. 2. We wanted very good food, not the most excellent cuisine, but good food. 3. We wanted the set up and break down to be minimal. 4. The hotel has a casual place to hang Friday night for drinks and Sunday for brunch. 5. It has hotel rooms for people who wish to crash overnight or for the weekend. 6. The ballroom is expandable and can hold 300 people easily. 7. It is located within 15 miles of our alma mater with free parking. 8. And we negotiated very good terms. (More on neg...