Planning a family reunion or class reunion usually starts with a lot of excitement…and no money.
Before registration fees start coming in, you will probably need cash to pay for your reunion platform, open a separate checking account, venue deposits, or other early expenses.
One way to kickstart your reunion fund is by selling products – also called ‘merch’ – to your community and anyone else who wants to support you.
Sell Early & Often.
Instead of waiting until reunion weekend to sell T-shirts and souvenirs, you can turn them into an early fundraiser. With the Shop feature include with your Gettagether community, members can purchase reunion merchandise directly from you, add the profit from these sales can help fund the reunion itself.
The trick is to approach product sales as a small fundraiser—not as a giant online retail operation. Below is how you can do it.
Start With Pre-Orders.
Ordering 100 tshirts and hoping 100 people eventually buy them is a recipe for disaster for a first-time reunion event or if your family or class community isn’t used to buying reunion products. You don’t know what the demand will be yet. With clothing it also means guessing about sizes, colors and quantities.
A better approach is to sell first and produce second.
This means designing your product, creating a mockup of it to add to your shop, and announcing to your community that it’s available for pre-order.
You could say something like, “2027 Johnson Family Reunion shirts are now available! Order by March 15 to be included in our first production run.”
Members place their orders through your community Shop. You collect the money first. After the order window closes, you order exactly what was purchased and use the funds you collected to pay for it.
No need to risk yoour own money to pay for products up front.
You can even explain that purchasing reunion merchandise early helps get reunion planning underway. People aren’t simply buying a T-shirt. They’re helping provide some of the first dollars your committee needs to start making the reunion happen.
A Simple 7-Step Reunion Merch Fundraiser
- Choose just one to three products to start. A T-shirt is usually the obvious first choice, but totes, hats, sweatshirts, mugs or other keepsakes can work too. Don’t launch a 20-product gift shop on day one. Fewer products mean fewer decisions, fewer mistakes and easier fulfillment.
- Create the design. Canva is one of the easiest places for a non-designer to start. It has T-shirt templates, mockup tools and even a collection specifically for family reunion designs. Browse Canva’s family reunion design collection You can create a family name treatment, reunion theme, class year, city, reunion year or special saying and then preview the design on merchandise before ordering it. Canva permits original designs using its licensed content to be sold on physical products subject to its licensing rules, so always review the terms for the elements you’re using.
- Choose how the merchandise will be produced. You can use a local vendor which will usually be less expensive, order in bulk online, use print-on-demand, or—if someone on the committee already has the equipment—produce some items yourself. We’ll compare those options below.
- Calculate your total cost before setting the selling price. The goal is to make money so you need to be sure of what the costs to sell your products online are so you can set a price that makes you money. Don’t look only at what the vendor charges for the item. There are costs to get a product from the manufacturer to you and costs to get that product to the buyer. These include printing/embroidery, packaging, payment processing* and shipping unless everyone is local to you and can pickup their orders in person.
- Add the products to your GTAG Shop and open the sale. Members can shop from inside the reunion community, add items to their cart and pay through the Shop’s Stripe-powered checkout. Keep the sales period simple and give people a clear order deadline.
- Produce and fulfill the orders. If you’re using a local vendor, send the final quantities after your pre-order deadline ends. If you’re using print-on-demand, you manually place orders online to the POD provider. If you plan to ship orders out yourself you can get free packaging and labels from your local post office and send them out.
- Add the tracking number to the GTAG order and mark it shipped. GTAG does not currently handle fulfillment but we do have a place for you to record a tracking number and mark an order as shipped.
*Note: Gettagether uses Stripe to process online credit card payments and we collect a fee of 3.9% + $0.55 cents on each order. On a $20 order, that’s $1.33 leaving you $18.67 in revenue.
That’s the entire system.
Sell → collect → produce → ship → keep the profit for the reunion.
Local Printer or Print-on-Demand?
There isn’t one right answer. It depends on how many orders you expect and how much work your committee wants to handle.
| Production method | Upfront risk | Profit potential | Committee workload | Best fit |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Local printer/bulk order | Low if you pre-sell first | Usually higher | Moderate | Larger pre-order campaigns |
| Print-on-demand | Very low | Usually lower | Low to moderate | Small quantities or scattered orders |
| DIY production | Varies | Potentially high | Highest | Committees with equipment and experience |
Local printing can give you better margins
Call a few local screen-printing, embroidery or DTF printing businesses and request quotes.
Tell them approximately how many pieces you expect, how many print colors are in the design, how many garment colors you want and whether the quantities can include mixed sizes.
Don’t be afraid to ask:
“What quantity gets us to your next price break?”
A shirt that costs $16 each at 15 pieces may drop significantly when you order 50.
This is another reason pre-orders are useful. Instead of guessing whether you can reach a quantity discount, you know how many buyers you actually have.
And always order or approve a sample before committing to a large run if possible.
Print-on-demand keeps inventory risk very low
Print-on-demand, or POD, works differently.
The product isn’t produced until someone orders it. Companies such as Printful and Printify offer custom apparel and other products without requiring you to purchase a large inventory first.
Explore Printful print-on-demand products
Explore Printify custom products
The tradeoff is margin. The per-item production cost is generally higher than a good bulk price from a local printer.
Also remember that GTAG does not currently have native POD fulfillment integration. If someone orders through your GTAG Shop, the committee would manually place the corresponding order with the POD provider and then enter the resulting tracking information back into GTAG.
That may be perfectly manageable for 20, 50 or even 100 orders. It simply needs to be part of your committee’s fulfillment plan.
For a fundraiser, a local bulk printer combined with pre-orders will often produce better margins. POD can be particularly useful when avoiding inventory is more important than maximizing profit.
How Much Should You Charge?
This is where committees sometimes accidentally turn their fundraiser into a break-even project.
Suppose a T-shirt costs you $12.
Selling it for $15 does not mean you raised $3.
You may also have packaging, shipping and payment-processing costs. If those costs aren’t included in your price, your “fundraiser” may generate very little money.
A useful pricing formula is:
Selling Price = Product Cost + Packaging + Shipping + Transaction Costs + Reunion Profit
Then give yourself a little cushion for unexpected costs.
For transactions processed using standard domestic cards, Stripe currently lists its standard U.S. card-processing rate as 2.9% + 30¢ per successful transaction. GTAG’s Shop transaction fee is 1% + 25¢ per transaction, so committees should account for both when setting merchandise prices.
Here’s a simple example.
Suppose your costs for one mailed reunion T-shirt are:
| Cost | Amount |
|---|---|
| Printed shirt | $12.00 |
| Packaging | $0.75 |
| Estimated shipping | $5.50 |
| Desired contribution to reunion fund | $8.00 |
Once the percentage and fixed transaction costs are considered, you’d need to charge roughly $28 to preserve approximately that $8 contribution.
That $8 is the important number.
Sell 25 shirts and you’ve generated roughly $200 for the reunion fund.
Sell 75 and you’re around $600.
Now your merchandise is doing more than making everybody look good in the group photo. It’s helping pay for the reunion.
Your actual costs will vary, so calculate using your printer’s quote and your real shipping costs before publishing the final price.
Don’t forget to include shipping charges
Shipping is one of the easiest costs to forget.
If you plan to advertise a shirt as “$25 including shipping,” then shipping is part of your product cost whether the buyer sees it separately or not.
If the committee pays $6 to mail that shirt, only $19 remains before merchandise and transaction costs.
For that reason, determine how you will fulfill – get your orders to the buyers – before setting your product price in the Shop.
You might also encourage local members to pick up merchandise at a committee event or designated location when practical. Every order that doesn’t need to be mailed can leave more money in the reunion fund.
An Easy, Low-Cost Way to Ship Reunion Merch
You don’t need a warehouse, shipping department or expensive software.
For many reunion committees, Pirate Ship is worth considering. It lets users purchase discounted USPS and UPS labels without a monthly fee or per-label software charge.
For lightweight merchandise such as T-shirts, compare your available rates before purchasing the label. USPS Ground Advantage is one common option for domestic packages; USPS currently describes it as a 2–5 business-day service with USPS Tracking included.
Learn about USPS Ground Advantage
A simple committee workflow might look like this:
Open the GTAG order, package the merchandise, weigh and measure the package, purchase the least-expensive appropriate label, attach it to the package, then copy the tracking number into the GTAG order and mark it shipped.
For shirts and other soft merchandise, lightweight poly mailers can help keep package weight and size down. For fragile products such as mugs, use proper protective packaging even if it costs a little more. Saving $1 on packaging doesn’t help if you’re replacing broken merchandise.
You also don’t have to make a post-office trip every time somebody orders. Establish one or two fulfillment days each week and process several orders together.
Keep Your First Merch Collection Simple
The temptation is to offer men’s shirts, women’s shirts, children’s shirts, sweatshirts, polos, hats, mugs, tumblers, tote bags, keychains and matching socks.
Resist.
Your first fundraiser might simply be:
Official Reunion T-Shirt
Reunion Tote Bag
Commemorative Sweatshirt
That’s enough.
You’ll learn what your community actually wants. If the shirts sell quickly and nobody buys the tote bags, that’s useful information for the next round.
You can always add merchandise later.
Make the Merchandise Feel Like Something Worth Keeping
People are more willing to support a fundraiser when the product doesn’t feel like an obligation.
Instead of putting enormous text reading “SMITH FAMILY REUNION 2027” across every product, consider creating something people might actually wear again.
Think about your family’s history, hometown, family saying, reunion theme, founding generation or distinctive family story.
For a class reunion, consider the graduation year, reunion milestone, school colors, hometown references or shared memories.
One important caution for class reunions: school names, logos and mascots may be protected intellectual property. Don’t assume that because you attended the school you automatically have permission to reproduce its official logo on merchandise. Check with the school, district, university or applicable rights holder when necessary.
The same basic rule applies to artwork from the internet: finding an image online doesn’t give you permission to print and sell it.
Use your own artwork or appropriately licensed design elements.
Tell People What Their Purchase Is Helping Accomplish
This may be the most important part.
Don’t simply post:
“Reunion shirts are available.”
Explain why buying one early matters.
Try messaging such as:
“Help us get reunion planning started! Our first official reunion merchandise collection is now available in the GTAG Shop. A portion of every purchase goes directly toward early reunion expenses including deposits and planning costs.”
Now the purchase has a purpose.
Someone may have been on the fence about buying a $28 shirt. Knowing that $8 or $10 of that purchase helps get the reunion off the ground changes the conversation.
It also gives family members or classmates who can’t attend the reunion a way to participate and support the community.
Merch Can Become Your First Reunion Fundraiser
You don’t have to wait until registration opens to begin building your reunion budget.
A small, thoughtfully planned merchandise campaign can help your committee generate early cash while also building excitement.
Start small.
Create one good design.
Choose one or two products.
Pre-sell before ordering inventory.
Price for profit, not just to recover the printing cost.
Use affordable shipping.
Track fulfillment carefully.
And let your community know exactly what their purchases are helping make possible.
With the GTAG Shop, your reunion merchandise can become more than something everyone wears on Saturday afternoon.
It can help pay for Saturday afternoon.