Thoughts On Reunion Planning

In planning the 50th year reunion a total of 3 hardcopy mailings were used to ensure that as many classmates as possible were contacted. Both regular letters and postcards were used in this effort. Because of the large size of our class, and the ever increasing cost of traditional mailings, the total cost of the mailings was about $1,000 according to information provided by Frank Bright.

Mailing expenses would have been even higher had not email and the Blog page of the class web site been used to share the 5 updates prepared on the status of reunion planning. Had that information been mailed in hard copy form the total mailing cost could have easily doubled, or perhaps gone even higher. Posting those 5 updates on the class web site Blog also makes them available to classmates who might not have been on the mailing list at the time the updates were emailed.

Using the online approach to stay in contact as a class is an obvious step we must use to minimize hard copy mailing expenses for future reunions. But to be effective this means each online classmate needs to keep their email and home address information current in the class alumni records. Also, it would be helpful if everyone routinely reads the Fair Park related emails in their email inbox and on the Blog. Some classmates have told us they hardly ever turn on their computer. If you are in that category, going online once a week would probably be enough to stay current on class related matters.

To make it easy to keep your home and email address information up-to-date an Address Update form was added to our class web site more than a year ago. There is still lots of room for greater use of that resource since only about 40% of the classmates for whom we have address and email information have used the Update form to confirm their information.

Adding your current contact information to the Address Update form can usually be done in less than two minutes. The form should be used when any changes to any contact item is needed. If fact, it would be a good idea to use the form at least once a year even if your information hasn’t changed.

If you have questions that I didn’t cover in this article, use the News Link at the top right of the Blog page to get in touch with me.