How to do an easy Secret Santa for your office

 

It’s that “wonderful” time of the year where you may have to buy the dreaded secret Santa present for someone in your office. If you are lucky, it might be someone that you know well and that makes buying the present a lot easier. If you are unlucky, it could be someone that has just joined the company or someone you don’t have a lot to do with which makes it challenging right.

There is a great website that we have discovered that you can use to make the whole process easier. The website is called Draw Names. To start setting up the secret Santa:

• Create a group
• Enter in your name and email address as admin
• Enter in everyone else’s name and email address
• Make any exclusions on who should not draw whom (eg partners, best friends, etc)
• Set-up gift exchange details such as amount limit
• Send the invitations (check it doesn’t go into junk if emailing)
• Everyone accepts the invitation to join the group
• The computer will draw their person’s secret Santa name

The next step is what makes the whole process simple as each person in the group gets to create a wish list using the gift finder. The gift finder connects to the Mighty Ape website using the amount set by the admin to select what gifts they would prefer to receive. Once the wish list has been completed, a notification gets set to your secret Santa person so they can see what you want. There is no obligation to buy from Mighty Ape website, however it gives you an idea of what they want so you can find it elsewhere. For example, the group limit is $30 per person, all gifts listed will be below $30 and you can choose to buy two gifts to make it up to $30 or one gift that equals $30. A pair of Bluetooth headphones is listed at $29 on the Mighty Ape website, however you find one at Noel Leeming which is a better colour and quality for the same price so you may choose to buy from there.

Then create a central secret Santa box in the office for all the wonderful gifts. Make sure everyone has put names on them when they go into the box.

There is also an option to take it virtual, with the names being drawn live for everyone to watch and then the gifts to be posted to the recipient at their home.

Following this process, we have managed to select gifts that are affordable, wanted by your recipient and easy to access/have delivered. This whole process is so easy and quick, it might just turn your bah humbug into a Merry Christmas!!!