1. I cannot please everyone (I knew this), but I have to let go of their irritation and not let it affect me.

2. Open the class checking account sooner than 2 weeks before the reunion. My bad - LOL.

3. Transfer all the funds to the checking account sooner than 2 weeks before the reunion. I had to pay out of my own pocket for the goodies in the gift bags and reimburse myself.

I thought I would have more to share, but it all left my brain. Anyone else have anything to add?

1. Don't open a class checking account in the first place.

2. Simply find a venue that's GLAD to have your business (in THIS economy there's a plethora of them) and thereby you'll receive a room for free with your very VAGUE promise that you'll try to fill it.

3. Then let everyone order off the menu and at the bar. Translation? No need for pre-registration for the reunion. No need for pre-payment. More people will show up knowing that they have the option to simply order ice water if they want and that's all that it will cost them.

4. Enjoy the mega-kudos you'll receive by having a user-friendly, cheap-as-can-be reunion with a great turnout.

5. Oh, and ditch the gift bags. At THIS age, ALUMNI are the gift bags!

Besides going to the Class Creator web page for planning a reunion, not much more can be added.

Off the top of my head, I would recommend the following HIGH POINTS, which I believe are covered on the CC page.

Depending on your available places, reserve it a year [or more] ahead of time.
{Though I thinks big enough not to have to worry about it}
Delegate!
Things like name tags for instance, can be done by someone across the country – and have them mail them to you a few weeks BEFORE the reunion. [Don’t want them to accidentally leave them on the desk at home, 1200 miles from the reunion!]
Delegate!
Create a spreadsheet with dated deadlines.
Utilize the ‘chat’ feature at CC for on line meetings.
Delegate!
Take lots of good notes – who knows – you may not want to do this next time, so document every darn thing. Having too much information CAN be irritating, but it is better than leaving something out.
Where to store your document?
How about a ‘survey page’ that only the site administrators can get to.
Otherwise, use ‘Windows Live’ and limit access to the document.
Delegate!

I’ve said enough for now.

Steve

Yes, definitely! If you are part of an event committee group make sure you closely and carefully manage everyone's expectations about what you will and will not do. In my case I said I'd "do" the website event advertising only and nothing more. Also cautioned them that I hold the legal responsibility and right to decide what goes on it or not. Also, give everyone on that committee specific guidelines upfront about what they may or may not say or do about the website to others publicly. I have a chairperson who inappropriately made all kinds of assumptions and broadcast them out publicly about what I would do with the site for "her event" after our upcoming event is over that I finally had to nip in the bud just today. As a result, next time I do this I will actually consider writing up a "contract" for the event organizers to sign to protect myself.

I forgot to mention:

Ya' need someone to write everything down in the meetings, especially who is going to do what, and by when, and then email everyone in the committee a copy of these 'minutes.'

That way, LESS likelyhood of finger pointing or 'I didn't know I was supposed to do that' down the road.

Some classes have even posted these on their web page, but we chose NOT to do this.

Good stuff everyone. Unfortunately, I volunteered to help and ending up doing everything myself. Fortunately, I love planning a party, so it wasn't a big deal for me.

With regards to storing documents, if you have a Gmail account, the Google Documents feature is awesome. You can send an email to who you want to view it to give them access to view and/or edit.

Ronna wrote: "Don't open a class checking account in the first place."

I actually think this is a must if you are accepting money for the reunion activities and registration. Being self-employed for the last 11 years, if I ever get audited, I absolutely want a separate checking account, because I don't want anyone thinking the reunion money is actually my income. Better safe than sorry. Fortunately, my banker agreed.

All interesting ideas. They reflect class sizes and the make-up of various reunion committees. All are different.

We get venues early. Our class graduated 640 and we had others who did not graduate. But that is a crap shoot every time.

We design a budget early. It's something to go back to if things change. For instance, someone has offered to DJ our reunion free. That frees up some money! What will we do with it?

Obviously just going to a restaurant won't work for our size.

We begin our serious meetings this week. I will make sure notes are taken now. Up until now it's been pretty laid back. We also have "new" people this time. That is always good as health changes, people die and time marches on. New experience is needed. In saying that though, I want to make sure things are documented!!

An interesting thread!
DKD

Re: checking account. We opened one in a local credit union. The checking account was set up as an "interest free", meaning that the account does not earn any interest.

With a class of appx 600, we only have about about 150 +/- (classmates & spouses) show up. We establish a budget for 135. Every reunion, we have 25-60 extra people show up at the last minute. The reunion weekend is 2-days Friday & Saturday. We have been able to keep the per person cost under $50. With the unused $$ we throw birthday parties (5 year intervals) for ~$10/person. This works out as a mid reunion gathering.

JohnB

We use any extra money in the account to pay for the webhosting.

Your interest free checking account is a good idea, however make absolutely certain that you keep very good accounting records of where every penny & dollar too is coming from and going out to. If you fail to do this, you run a very high risk that your "Uncle Sam" might come and knock on your door in two or three years.

Your bank or credit union has no requirement or obligation to advise you, but if you don't dot all your I's and cross all your T's correctly, life as you know it today, may have some very far reaching and rather negative consequences.

I'm in the process of writing an article that should be posted on the Class Creator site or these forums in the not too distant future dealing with much of what I've said and further explanations.

Hi John...I will be looking forward to that article...we are just approaching our 40th Class reunion...and need all the advice and information we can get...

I admire your effort. Since my class is 20 years older, we have had more experience and have made more mistakes over the years. Class Creator will help us have a really great 50th reunion in 2011. I live 600 miles away, but I can administer the website. Others who are closer have arranged the venue. As we age, we like brighter lights and quieter music and don't need gift bags -- but would enjoy them.
Best wishes to all,
Demaris
Henry Grady Class of 1961

We just had our 50th last month. Ours was 3 days, which included options for friday, school tour and tailgate party on school grounds and a dinner/dance on saturday and a farewell brunch on Sunday. Our class is over 600 and we had over 200 classmates and spouses!

We met every 2 weeks with a committee of 9 for 1 1/2 years. One of the committee members lived about 1200 miles away and communicated her thoughts via email. We kept detailed minutes and they were referred to at many, many meetings so this is very important.

We also had a photographer. She was a recent graduate from our school and had been in the photography club. The pictures were okay, certainly not professional, but what we would do differently is to guide her more. There were some, unfortunately whose pictures did not get taken.

This website was and is the best way for classmates to get and stay in touch with each other.

Betty

Just had my 45th in August.
It was the first for our new committee..our last one was over 15 yrs ago..so we were drawing off old lists.
If it wasn't for CC we would never have pulled this reunion off in 1 yr. My committee of me and 12..a lucky 13..worked our tails off..we met every mo..and then every 2 wks, about 2 month before the reunion and then almost every week. We met 2 days before to finish all the details.
I had a awesome team..some were experts at negotiations, other in finding the printer, name tag co, dj, photo etc etc.
We had a locating committee of 3 to try to locate over 1700 students (it was a multi-year class reunion)using 15 yr old lists.
We have our post reunion meeting coming up in 2 wks..to see what we did wrong..and right..and how to improve.
We have a post reunion Survey on the website for good or bad feedback.
Suggestions so far are:
Take 2 years to plan the reunion..especially if you haven't had a reunion in eons.
Open up a checking account...and get an FIN#
Elect a Executive Board, consisting of a Chair, Co-Chair,Secretary & Treasurer.
Appoint Committees ie: Locating Committee, Memory Book Committee, Contract Negotiators, etc.
Appoint a Reunion Event Planner, Webmaster, Site Admins.
Use CC's great Reunion Planner...use the Credit Card option along with checks. We had over 50% of our students paid by credit..could be more haven't checked the survey results lately.
With large reunions I suggest to get a name badge company to do all the name tags. We scrambled last minute doing the guests badges.
Mske sure you set a deadline for tickets sales. We cut them off 2 wks before the reunion and still people wanted to buy tickets. With our contractual obligations we had to cut off the number of attendee to the sat nite dinner. Most classmates don't understand that.
I will post more to come. I am outlining how to plan a reunion for my successor. Once finished with it..I will post it here..most likely in October sometime.
I hope this helps
And remember you can not please everyone..and don't take their criticism personally.

Thanks Darlene and ALL:

We could write a book -- heck we SHOULD write a book!

Another item for Brad's list... get that book compiled.

That is a great idea, John!

-Gwen

Great Idea!!!
Compile all the lessons we learned along with all the posts on here...We could make a fortune!!

Gwen Corey wrote:

I said WE could write a book -- not Brad could write a book. Brad's got enough on his plate.

Okay, John.

Put me on your list of volunteers.

Here is a bit from me:
- When the reunion plan is made late and many grumble about the plan...
- When the reunion is preceeded by uproars on Facebook, name calling and more...
- When you take over as 'lead' planner with little input from anyone and little interest...
- When communication is poor...
... keep on pluggin' - it gets better on the other side.

I was sure we'd be lucky to have 40 classmates register as comments were so negative. There are now 75 of the 200+ found; plus over 20 spouses.

Our reunion is in 11 days. I am working on plans for a "Getting Ready for 60" gathering here in Charleston, SC. I may have a survey in announcements a couple days before the reunion ready to make live in the midst of things. I'll have a brochure or flyer with me to share the info. Of course, I will go by the results of a survey.

That is my input, John. If I can help in anyway, it would be a pleasure.

Gwen

Gwen,
You are doing great..if you have almost 100 attendees now..out of 200+ you are running at 50% attending..that's unusual..since the party planners out there in partyland say you get about 10% we have over 1700 classmates and we got about 200...we have over 80 deceased that we know of..last time I looked we have about a 18% active rate.
Keep plugging. You will always have the complainers whatever you do they won't like..tell them to step up and be on the committee...see how fast they shut up.
Sorry about the negative comments you received. Sounds like very immature adults..or they think they are back in HS.
I am sure everything will turn out great!!!
Keep up the good work!!

Thanks for the kind reply, Darlene!

Allow me to update the numbers... I noted the # of classmates found in my post above. Our total classmate count is 383. We have 24 deceased; 209 found with email addresses; 68 found with postal addresses only; and 84 still missing. We began our search last year on Facebook and went into full search mode around June this year! A team of six were quite successful in their efforts.

Here is a more interesting stat... I started this site on August 9th, 2010. One month and four days later, 113 have signed into our site and donations have been received pointing us to a 3-year subscription. I watched as classmates signed into Facebook this weekend, asking them to check out the site. Two out of five came.

As to our reunion in ten days, my guess is that a 40th reunion would not have been planned if it were not for a group of us pushing for it last summer/fall. Before i began to reply, I read (again) your post above. I regret saying there has not been a committee. There was a request for a lead planner, which I grabbed wanting to do more than the planned four hours.

Some who can not make it have asked for a Memory Book and a picture. I could make it happen but have decided to do a book after the reunion.

Today, ten days out, a classmate wrote today asking if she could help decorate. Decorate? Now someone is thinking of what they did in the past...finally.

News flash! A classmate who is unable to make the reunion due to prior engagements just called. She will make our name tags using the design I found on the web with senior pics! Check that one OFF my list!

So this reply, as long as it is, has more for 'the book'... never say it is too late -- you can pull it off!

Gwen