Family Reunion Organizer is sometimes called a checklist for planning family reunions, but I find it to be far more than just a checklist. It not only tells what must be done at every stage of planning, but it also gives suggestions that make the planning so easy that perhaps even I could plan an acceptable event. It is not only for family reunions; it can be easily adapted to the planning of any sort of gathering. It can handle as many different gatherings as you wish.

The program comes on a CD-ROM, and installation is simple. The presentation of the software is also simple and easy to follow. Each item to be considered is plainly presented, and most have a button for details or ideas that give more explanation and suggestions. There is an online help facility, and the user is given the URL of the Family Reunion Web site, where a variety of support is provided.

Getting Started
Under the “getting started” phase, you are asked to give the name of a gathering and the information about the organizer. This information will be used in other forms throughout the planning sessions and follow up. There is a space for the e-mail address, the regular address, and the phone number of the major planner, and also for a logo and a Web site (optional).

The second task is to build a family address book. This lists all families involved, with room for the names of all family members, addresses, phone numbers, e-mail addresses, Web sites, and notes. There is even an option of moving a person from one family to another, in case the user makes an error.

The address book can import addresses from GEDCOM files, which would save a great deal of typing for some of us. This address book will later be used for printing labels for all mailings concerning the reunion—surveys, reminders, thank-you notes, invitations, and others. The author calls it the heart of the program. After the address book is completed—or at least started—setting up a reunion committee completes the “getting started” phase of planning.

Initial Planning
Several items must be attended to at a very early date. The first is deciding what kind of reunion to plan. Will it be a very small one, including only the immediate family or those living nearby? Will it be a grand affair with invitations sent to every known descendant of a certain ancestor? Will it include only the children of the oldest living relative? With every generation included, there will be a host of new relatives to be located and invited. To omit anyone whose “group” is included is certain to cause very hard feelings, and this program helps you avoid those problems.

A survey of the family is included in this section. It is already formatted so that you have only to print and send it to family members, asking for their help and ideas about the reunion. This sheet can be imported into a word processor so you can edit it, select fonts and page layouts, or change the wording to suit your own needs.

Other initial planning involves the selection of a theme (optional) and the dates. Selecting a theme for any kind of party simplifies further planning, since it will suggest decorations, games and activities, and food. A number of possible themes are given, with suggested decorations, activities, and refreshments to go along with each.

Selecting the Location
The location will be partly determined by the size of the gathering and could be influenced by the selected theme, but a number of the suggestions given by the software could be adapted to various locations—a large back yard or park, a city recreation center, a restaurant or other entertainment facility, etc. There are helpful ideas about selecting and reserving the particular location to be used, and about locating and reserving lodgings for out-of-town guests. The address of the selected location and of the lodgings, along with directions for finding them, can be entered into the program and used with the invitations to be mailed at a later date.

Telling the Family
Several steps are included in notifying the family of the reunion. First, you must create an invitation—and this program does that for you. It will read the information you have placed in the program in the steps described above to create an informative and attractive invitation for you to send to each family in your address book. It will create mailing labels or print the addresses on the back of each invitation so you can fold, stamp, and mail it as a tri-fold sheet. It can create a Web page for you to upload to your own Internet Service Provider, and it offers suggestions of some ISPs that offer free space if you don’t already have one. While it cannot automatically do the uploading for you, sufficient instructions are given that you should be able to do that yourself. A reminder to be mailed to each family can be created automatically.

Paying for the Reunion
This is perhaps one of the most difficult parts of reunion planning. How can we determine the cost? How much should each family pay? How can money be raised to meet expenses? All of these topics are covered in the checklist and in the Help section for this part of the plan. These items are so variable, however, that it is in this area that the user is most often left to his or her own knowledge.

Forms are provided for creating a bank account, for setting up a budget, for creating a shopping list, and for tracking the expenses, but not many suggestions are given here. Many of us would probably not have thought of setting up a bank account just for this purpose, but it is certainly recommended. It is much easier to keep track of such a special bank account, and far easier to audit later, than to mingle funds with someone’s regular account. Several suggestions are given for fund-raising, and they would surely be welcome to anyone charged with funding a reunion.

Planning Activities
Some planning for activities will have taken place much earlier in the process, but at this point, specific games and activities must be chosen. A schedule must be prepared to ensure that meals and activities are offered at convenient times. Suggestions are given for many sorts of activities, and Family-Reunion.com offers more. There are forms for each of these activities to make sure that everything is in writing and nothing is forgotten.

Final Preparations
Before the actual day arrives, Family Reunion Organizer will help make the final preparations easier. It will print award certificates for the activities that need such rewards. It can make nametags using a variety of standard forms. By using the names in the address book, a tag can be printed for each person who will attend, and all you have do is click OK. It will also create a sign-in sheet for you to use at the reunion, which will help you collect information that will be helpful for future reunions.

After the Reunion
It is important that evaluation forms are sent to everyone who attended the reunion, and that thank-you notes are sent to anyone who took any sort of responsibility. Family Reunion Organizer will print those automatically and will address them for you. All you have to do is put them into envelopes and add the stamps.

And after all this, you may take your well-earned rest, having planned and carried out a successful reunion—with far less worry and fuss than you’d anticipated. What a wonderful help this program is! I heartily recommend it.

Betty Clay is a (retired) math teacher. She has been doing genealogical research for more than 30 years and attends numerous conventions and institutes in order to improve her skills. She began her writing career with technical articles for computer magazines, but now writes mostly for genealogical publications.