If your class is having a reunion click on the 'contact us' link (top left of the page) or or the list your reunion on your site link at the very top of this page and send me the details! I'll get it posted on the site right away. Please be sure and include the year of your class (ie: 1990), the date or potential date and who they should contact (name and your email).

*** IMPORTANT NOTE: I will only post reunion details for Rogers. If you are from another school, please contact that school or their websites for help with promotion of your reunion.

This is a question I get a lot and by no means am I an expert but here are some tips you mind find helpful.

Form a Planning Committee
Get together with some of your classmates. Start making plans for what you want to do and when you want to do it. You should try and find your class president and have him or her on the committee as they will have valuable information such contact information and class funds details.

Get Organized
The best way to have a successful reunion is to keep yourself organized! Start a database of all your classmates and keep all of your records computerized. Who is missing? Who is coming? Who have you called? What do you still need to do?

Have a meeting
Your first meeting should be months if not up to a full year away from your intended reunion. At this first meeting you should discuss where you want to hold your reunion and most importantly, on what date. If you don't know where just yet, suggest locations. But most importantly set a date so that you can have a starting point.

Find a Location
After your first meeting you should if nothing else have a date for your future reunion. Now you can assign a person to call around local places to find a suitable location and figure out how much it is going to cost your class to have this reunion.

Be reasonable.
Your classmates aren't made of money. As such it's not likely they can afford to pay huge prices for tickets. Keep your reunion plans simple and cost effective.

Find your classmates
This will no doubt be your hardest job. Create a database of all the classmates you can find. Send out emails and letters and ask other classmates to help you. Make phone calls and keep records of everyone you find and those who you are missing. Your class president should have a list of last known addresses ... if not, contact the school for help with this matter.

Start Mailing
Send our a letter to everyone you have found. Consider this an introduction kind of letter letting your classmates know you are planning a reunion and need their help finding lost classmates and the tentative date you have set for the reunion.

Start Raising Funds
Planning a reunion doesn't have to be expensive but it's typically not free either and it's never to early to start raising money for it. Keep VERY good and detailed records of all funds. Work with your class president on this as he or she is typically the one with access to your class fund account.

Obviously this is not a definitive guide to planning a reunion but I do hope this information is helpful to you. As you can see planning a reunion is no easy task and the sooner you get started on it the better. If you would like help in organization for your reunion or promotion for it, please feel free to contact me.

The more reunions you have, the easier it gets. But for your first, it is suggested you start planning your reunion at least one year in advance. Why so long? Well these things take time. You not only have to make all the plans for the event itself, but find all your lost classmates and raise the money for the event.

Although it can be done in less time, the more planned and organized you are, the better and hopefully less costly your event will be.

Those professional reunion planning companies can be VERY costly. So the question really is, how much money are you willing to spend on your reunion. The more your tickets cost, the less likely you are to have people not interested in coming.

So if you happen to have a few thousand dollars laying around and can afford it on your own, without having to raise the extra money through fund raising efforts or increased ticket cost, then sure. They can be a great help in finding lost classmates but if you don't have that kind of money, then I would say really try to form a great committee on your own and do it yourself.

Well if your budget permits (or you have someone who can help by donating stuff) you could do door prizes! Simply go to a place like Best Buy, Wal-Mart or even Sams at get a few items like small TVs, DVD players - things of that nature and when each person comes in, you add their name to the drawing and at the end of the name you draw names for the winners of these prizes.

You can also do a 'Where are they now' handbook or pamlet that you can hand out at the reunion. Although you can have it professionaly done, that tends to cost a lot of money when you could just do it yourself. Prior to the reunion have everyone provide you with details of their life. Then print that information up and hand it out at the reunion. Anyone with remotely decent computer skills and a trip to your local kinko's (for binding) can do this on their own.

It could be simple like:
NAME: Tracy Richardson
MARITAL STATUS: Single
KIDS: 0

Or if you really wanted to go all out, ask other questions (more detailed) and get photos to add to it!

Another fun thing you can do is contests. Who has the most kids? Who's been married the longest? Who's got the coolest job? Who has --whatever--. These can be little award certificates you print up on your computer.

Reunion time isn't the only time you have to keep in contact with your classmates. Why not use the reunion planning database to keep up with classmates at least once a year by sending out a Class Newsletter?

You can do this via regular mail (which can be costly) or even via email, which is free!

People can write it and give updates (ie: So and so got married this year, so and so had a baby, etc.) and you put that information in your newsletter for the year - month, quarter, whatever is easiest for you. :)

If your class does not have a website and you would like help putting together a contact database for a digital newsletter, just let me know. I will set up a webpage for any class (www.WillRogersHighSchool.com/YOURCLASS) as well as database software for contact information for free.

Raising money is always hard for every single class. People have tried just about everything you can imagine from getting donations from local businesses to selling candy bars - even having car washes and you know what, I have yet to hear any one class having massive success with these methods over a short period of time. Raising money is a lot of hard work and it takes a long, long time.

Besides car washes, bake sales, selling products (like candy bars) and asking for donations from local businesses (which apparently rarely works), you could do raffels with your classmates and even just flat out ask for donations - outside of the normal ticket cost. You could even do this over the internet if you have a paypal account.

My suggestion is that you keep costs for your reunions down as low as possible so that ticket prices are reasonable and that way you have to raise almost no money yourself - just sell tickets at prices people can afford.

How much is to much? Well, if your reunion costs more than $25 or $30 a person, you are going to find people that might have gone won't just because of the ticket price. So keep that in mind.

If you do take donations, make sure and let people know exactly how much you are trying to raise and keep the page updated as to how much you have raised so far. Kind of like United Way does. For example, our goal is to raise $700 by March 15th to defray the cost of the reunion. So far we have raised $85. Special thanks to (list off all the donators) for helping make our reunion more affordable!