5 Top Digital Tools for Organizing Events Like Family Reunions

2. Facebook

The social media platform might be the most popular option for organizing reunions due to its widespread use. It’s free and allows organizers to share event details and group members to post questions, information and photos. Unlike emails and texts, which can get lost or require endless scrolling to find a particular piece of information, Facebook keeps everything related to the reunion in a single place.

3. Websites

You can create a simple reunion site — using website builders like Wix.com or platforms like Reunacy, EventCreate or AmazingReunion — and use it to post event details, message boards and photos. Some travel agents, including Sally Black, offer to create websites for group events as part of their service.

4. Reunion apps

There are even reunion-specific apps. Family Reunion Helper, Pro Party Planner and Party & Event Planner Lite allow organizers to create guest lists and send invites, calculate costs, create to-do lists and send push notifications to attendees.

5. Apps for singular tasks

Doodle allows you to create a poll and invite your relatives to vote on specifics like the date, time or location, and online tools like Evite, Paperless Post and Punchbowl make designing and emailing digital invitations easy.

Don’t forget about low tech

There may be a host of tech tools that streamline communication between organizers and attendees, and it’s tempting to go with the one you think best. But Black cautions against picking just one. Instead, she suggests using multiple methods of communication to ensure the information reaches everyone.

“There is never enough communication,” she explains. “The message needs to be sent several times in several different ways to make sure it gets through — and there have to be checks and balances to communicate with people who are not [online].”

As planning for her family’s 2023 reunion begins, Clayton plans to send out paper invitations because relatives have requested a return to the low-tech option. She’ll still use a Facebook group to alert invitees that the invitations have gone out and to keep members up to date on reunion logistics.

Sciaroni acknowledges that some of his relatives don’t use Facebook and it takes extra effort to make sure they receive reunion information. That’s where family steps in, helping to spread the word, telephoning older relatives who don’t use computers and sharing information at holiday gatherings. So far, it’s working.

“There is always the risk that someone will feel left out, but people also got missed when the information was sent on paper,” he says. “I think [communicating about the reunion] would be a burden without technology.”