Okay..I am sure this has been addressed before but I am not finding what I am looking for...so here is my question...

My reunion is almost a year out. I have a facebook page (which is turning out to be a disaster due to personality conflicts/fighting)...I have put notices on various sites such as classmates.com and alumni sites. I plan to keep costs down by doing invites by email thru the members on CC and will have a copy on the site.Not everyone is on the computer and or wants to sign up.

* HOW did/are you keeping records of who you have to send regular mailings to? I am feeling a bit overwhelmed and need to know how to simplify the record keeping process and have it in such a way that if I need another committee member to jump in they will know exactly what is what. It is only going to get worse..once I put up the ticket sales!!

*How did you keep track of payments etc...

Any helpful tips, forms etc..would be greatly appreciated!!

The way I did it was in the ADMIN COMMENTS field of the Manage Classmate, Enter/Edit Classmate, DETAILS page. Whenever I sent out postcards to missing classmates, I put a comment in this field.

This field can be exported to your spreadsheet when you download the class list.

Agree with last response. As my reunion is also a year plus out I have found it useful to export classmates to excell file and I can then manipulate/add fields as needed to keep track of who I have contacted, etc. I am about to send out about 100 post cards and will use the excel file to keep track.

We have used the reunion planner for three reunions and it works great. I use the email the class in the admin functions... I like this too as it lets me know who has bad emails, I then call or send a snail mail to get them back on board...

I run a multi year website and not only receive cudo's for the site (thanks Class Creator for making my job so much easier) but receive donations on a regular basis...

Did I mention I run a multi-year site for the first 25-years of our school with over 1000 who are active.

On every major project I have a worksheet created in Excel as a backup. If your hard drive locks up what can you do? What if the information is inaccessable on Class Creator for technical reasons? What if you need to do calculations, add more columns as needs change? What if you need to transfer data to another Classmate because help is needed? I have a travel agent who needs data from time to time, even though registered as a guest member on our site, a spread sheet is great for moving data around, you can make a hard copy and make notes if you don't have a computer with you at a meeting.

Also if you go into the forum list on this page and just type 'Reunion' the search engine will probably pull up any addition question and get you an answer.

I used the reunion Timeline to plan a near flawless reunion...

My problems.. locating all you gals after so many years and name changes... you do make it difficult!!! but rewarding!!!

Reunion planner is great for those with those that you have an email (profile complete or not). NOTE: our 45th Reunion is this weekend!)

As Admin and called upon Treasurer, I am keep a separate EXCEL workbook. This is for the $$$ collected and the credit union accounts (checking & saving). This makes it much easier for the +/- of classmates paying then backing out after refund date (I.e. donations to the class). This spreadsheet is the one to use for your commitments to your event planners. The +/- in Reunion Planner will get to confusing!

Another tab could be use for emails contact and another mailing. I have not lost these EXCEL files as I share them with my fellow Admin.

Another suggestion would be for ONE Admin to work on the "Reunion Planner".

Hi Terry

I know that I have seen a reunion timeline somewhere. You mentioned it in your comment, can you tell me the location of the timeline.

Thanks

Randy

There is one in the FAQs. Is that the one you are talking about?
http://www.classcreator.com/faqs.cfm#plan
question #4

Thank You, I knew that I had seen it somewhere.

Randy

Kyle, the FAQ list is a GREAT ONE. Each Class will be at various stages on the list. Our Committee is pretty much set (as we have 7-8 reunions and 3 birthday parties behind us). We gave up on using USPS. The cost vs the return just does not match. We also found that ~80+% of our classmates live in the 6 county metro area of our school. So telephone (personal) calls works the best. BESIDES, CLASS CREATOR IS THE BEST!

We first secure a location. This is your largest expense. Deposits come from the previous reunions (if we did it correctly; or we have/find our "Golden Angels" to assist). Then the Committee establishes our budget, per person cost. (We charge $75 for a two (2) night reunion. This includes Hors d'oeuvre for Friday and buffet (chicken or steaks cooked to order) for Saturday night.) Entertainment is down to a disc jockey. We have found that most classmates just want 'meet & greet' format.

During the Saturday night event, we held a 50/50 raffle. This was to fund our CLASS CREATOR website. This was SO successful that we will be going premium membership shortly and it is funding our birthday party this year. In fact we did two 50/50 raffles. (It did not hurt that we had two 'sexy' (male & female) classmates selling the tickets.)

We have found that class gift or reunion books were just an expense. Nothing more. So we let our CLASS CREATOR website be our gift. (It sounds like I am being a paid political announcement .... Which I am!)