Things You'll Need:
- Computer and printer
- Internet access
- Business phone line
- Answering machine or voice mail
- Fax machine (helpful but not necessary)
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Step 1
Assess your personality. Being a reunion planner requires good people skills, strong organizational abilities, a penchant for details and an interest in “playing detective.” It's also helpful, of course, to like parties, since you'll not only be planning reunions but attending many of them as well.
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Step 2
Understand what you'll be doing. Reunion planners provide all the basic amenities, such as renting the event site, hiring the entertainment, arranging for the food, setting up photography services, providing name tags and taking care of the decorations. It's mostly seasonal work, primarily April through Thanksgiving. See the Resources section below for some useful websites to get you going.
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Step 3
Be prepared to play detective. The most important--and time-consuming--service the professional planner provides is locating and contacting class and family members. Planners find people through phone directories, school records, alumni associations, birth and marriage records, employers, neighbors and friends.
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Step 4
Set realistic goals for yourself. Because there's so much detail work involved, it's very easy to get overextended. Start with just a few, and fairly small, reunions until you get a feel for the time commitment and resources needed. Professional planners average about 25 to 30 reunions a season.
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Step 5
Make your business legal. Think of a catchy name for your new company and register it with your city or county clerk's office. The staff there will also tell you about licensing, zoning regulations and taxation laws.
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Step 6
Set up a business checking account with your bank once your business is registered and licensed.
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Step 7
Gather together the equipment you'll need (see above) and set up a work space for yourself. One of the advantages to being a reunion planner is that you can run your business out of your home.
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Step 8
Market yourself. Call up the area high schools and ask about upcoming reunions. Offer your services to the reunion committee, if there is one. Send out direct mailings to the alumni offices of high schools and colleges. Advertise in the local paper and the yellow pages. Place brochures or business cards in community and church meeting halls. Consider putting up a web page.
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Step 9
Accept that first job. Put forth your best effort in making it a reunion you're not only proud of, but that you'd want to attend yourself. Remember, every reunion you do is an advertisement for future business.
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Step 10
Get paid. Reunion planners collect their fee from the number of tickets sold. Out of that amount, the planner pays the expenses and claims the remainder as income. The better the attendance, obviously, the bigger the fee. Because of all the variables in planning a reunion, income is hard to project. It’s not uncommon to make two thousand dollars off a reunion. Sometimes it’s more, sometimes less.
