How to Start Organizing a Fun School Reunion

My twentieth high school reunion is coming up this year. And in October of 2007, I was so bored one day that I began thinking of planning our high school reunion! So I started doing so.
I have to admit that my high school reunion has not happened yet and I am no longer the chairperson of the reunion committee. But of the steps in this article and tips of this article I HAVE done.

Difficulty: Moderately Challenging

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• A computer
• Internet skills
• Spreadsheet software
• Time to commit YOURSELF to this project
• Time enough to hear back from third parties to organize.

1. You need to go to an internet website which they connect people from schools. Examples are Classmates and Reunion. You need to either sign yourself up or log yourself in and then look for reunions page. You may have to go to your school and school year you graduated from to do this. you then search to see if any of your classmates are already a Reunion Organizer for the year you graduated. If no one signed up then you sign yourself up.
   If someone in your class has signed up, then you can email them through that website to see if they need committee members still. You can suggest these other steps to that Reunion Organizer. If you don't care to see if the other person needs help in the committee, then you may stop reading this article.
   But, to be listed as a reunion organizer you MUST follow this step for as many internet web sites you can find which connects people of schools they graduated from.

2. Next, create a website geared towards your reunion. Go to web sites which help you create a website of your own. I personally created mine on Tripod.
   It has zillions of designs for all kinds of reasons you wish to create a website. You can make multiple pages for your site and use their all their basic tools for free. It only charges you to use technical tools for your website. Right away, I made two pages for the website. I had a Home Page, the first page, saying what the site is about and why. I also had a second page of a COMPLETE LIST of all the classmates that graduated in May of 1989 from our school. I am one to keep everything, a pack rat, and I had in my senior yearbook, the official Commencement Exercises Pamphlet which all of the guests received. And I typed all 500+ classmates on that pamphlet!! This is actually a GREAT idea to do because first of all, you can familiarize yourself with classmate names for the first time in years and secondly other classmates who look at your site can tell you if they know the whereabouts of other classmates.
   When you are done with your website, you can save it and add more pages as much as you can or want at a later time. On Tripod, when publishing your website, you can choose to either advertise your website on search engines or not. Personally, I chose not to advertise. Before you sign out, you should cut and paste the URL of that page to your "Favorites" or else your "Bookmark". I know that Tripod, will send you an email right afterwards with the URL link FOR YOUR WEBSITE.

3. After that, go back to ALL of the internet web sites you signed up as Reunion Organizer and create an "announcement" or an online "event". You need to tell people that YOU are the Reunion Organizer for the class. In the announcement / online event message you need to include the fact that you just created a website "..geared towards our reunion" and the URL link of your website. You may want to include if you need volunteers to put a committee together. Also, include in this message if or if not your website is advertised on search engines. A lot of people will just assume that if it is published on the web, it must be on search engines. And that's false. You will have a bunch of people emailing you for the link over and over again because you didn't tell them to save it under their favorites or bookmark the URL.
   After you do that, look carefully at EVERY connections website you joined as a Reunion Organizer. Look and see if they have extra tool pages for the Reunion Organizer. I know that Classmates, for example, gives EVERY listed Organizer a page to view EVERYONE who signed up for your class' s contact information.
   And so what I did with Excel software, I made a spreadsheet FOR MYSELF AND ANYONE WHO WORKED WITH ME ON THE COMMITTEE of ALL THE CLASSMATES AGAIN. The columns were the following; First Name, Madden Last Name, New Last Name, Street Address, City, State (or Area if not in USA), Zip-code, Email Address, Home Phone Number, Work Phone Number. Mobile Phone Number. And then I realized that Excel is made for mathematical charts! So, I decided to prioritize by State and Area and I totaled up the groups. And because I started this list just by writing down all the alumni member's names from the pamphlet, the first group totaled in a row were "Missing Alumni Members". After that, I had totaled rows of State and Areas from "A" to "Z". Also, Excel lets you do projects that may need more than one spreadsheet. So, I made another one. And what it was that Spreadsheet two was the row number you could find a specific classmate. And I did that because if a missing alumni member is found or if a classmate moved states or areas before the reunion, I was gonna have to cut and paste rows on spreadsheet one. And, to keep track of people on spreadsheet one, that's what spreadsheet two was for. I mean, it happened all the time!

4. What you wanna do next, is contact the last reunion committee members. And contact ALL OF THE MEMBERS. You need to ask them ONE QUESTION. You need to ask them if a bank account was ever created and saved of money not spent and left over. I saw this on Classmates Organizer page I think and committees REALLY do this. And the need to ask every member is because some of them will not remember. If you have a bank account for your class' s reunion, then most of the headache is over with. There's people at companies that help you plan (ie, Reunion Planning Companies); you may rent party equipment or hire a band or hire a DJ or a photographer / video person. You also have lodging and party rooms to block for your group. And if your committee goes into this without any money, you need to think of ways to raise money and lower hotel rates, for instance. budgeting is for a math person and a creative person to deal with. The creativeness, fundraising; sponsorship levels to think up; whatever. Budgeting is ALWAYS a HUGE HASSEL for everyone. Keep this in mind as well. You have people coming to this event that needs to think of how they are going to get the money to travel to the reunion as well as reunion tickets.

Tips & Warnings

• Here is what I was going to do. I KNEW from my website which I created and a questionnaire on it.., that most of the classmates who took the questionnaire wanted a summer reunion. So, I thought cheaply FOR EVERYONE!! Only summer school during the days would be in session and not on Saturday nor Sunday. And there is a big city park RIGHT NEXT TO our high school. So, I thought of Saturday and Sunday events already. Saturday would be just for the classmate and one guest. And Sunday would be for the mediate family members. The events would start in the afternoon of Saturday and meet in the cafeteria. Our cafeteria was 'L" shaped and in the middle we had a booth like space for like selling prom tickets during lunch and what have you. So, Committee members could sit or stand behind the booth area and seating would just be the folded down school lunch room tables they ALREADY had. And it was going to be a fun afternoon of little quizzes and scavenger hunt. The quiz could have been anything from who did what when to when was Senior Skip Day? And the scavenger hunt was going to include, "Ok..., go find your locker in senior year". It was going to be fun and cheap. Then, we were gonna ALL head to our gymnasium. And again, seating was just going to be the bleachers, free. And our seniors of sports, in our senior year, were going to just play a little game for the rest of the class. It would have been fun to see if basketball players could still make baskets and if wrestlers could still pin people down after twenty years!! And I was gonna have prizes for the people doing the things in the cafeteria and for the sports people, I was gonna have ACTUAL SCHOOL jerseys of the jersey style they have THIS YEAR but in the size of the player in 2009 with their 1989 number on the jersey. THAT NIGHT, I was going to have the formal - also located at the school. But the formal, it being summer, was going to be on the football field. In the first place, you already have decorations with the school mascot scoreboard. And all you'd have to rent out is a tent to cover if it rains and chairs and tables and tableware. I thought of a DJ by a local radio station. That would, I guess combine with sponsorship because you know that radio stations DJ shows at different events ALL THE TIME. You know a football field, its big enough to have dinner at one end and dancing at another! And I was thinking of buffet style dinner of catering. And then, Sunday afternoon, the
• When making your list of ALL OFFICIAL GRADUATES on the day you graduated, GO BY the OFFICAL Commencement Exercise' s Pamphlet. AND THIS RULE IS FOR EVERYTHING from confirming who is email you about it to making your spreadsheet. In the first place, if you go by year books students may have missed picture day of senior year. And finally, there are people listed in web sites such as Classmates and Reunion that DID NOT graduate when you graduated. And these people just signed up in your class!! I had a surprisingly amount of people that had to attend summer school in the summer after we graduated because they were a few credits short. And then I had less than a handful of people who went to our school but had to leave and go to another school due to a move. And I just had some people listed that said that they didn't go to our school they just knew people that did in 1989!! Basically, they just wanted to crash a party!!
• When you look at lodging, note their extras. See if the place has shuttle service. There are places that have shuttles to airports and train stations for a fee. And there are lodging that has FREE shuttle service to places within 5 miles. Also, look and see if they offer a free continental breakfast or not. Note that they have coffee makers in each room. And, for families, note what cable channels they offer or indoor pools or game rooms or even baby sitting service or cribs. I mean, there are tons of little things you need to look for when looking at lodging as well.

Resources

• Reunion
• Classmates
• Tripod

[DenaEBolton]

on 2/9/2009 Very thorough! Good info. 5*

[davidcavalier]

on 2/5/2009 great ehow

[sneedc]

on 2/5/2009 Very thorough here, thanks for the detailed "how to"!!! I think you can gather alot of folks through myspace and facebook! 5*

[Codebreak]

on 2/5/2009 Kool Info!

[labellefleur100]

on 2/5/2009 Great information and advice. I'll keep your ideas in mind 5*