How do I run a gift exchange?

Turn on Gift exchange in Manage → Features. It needs RSVP: guests join from their answer.

When you turn it on, you are in the exchange yourself unless you have answered your own invitation, in which case you join from your answer like any guest. Leave the exchange on the Gift exchange tab takes you out.

Set the rules

The Gift exchange settings hold three rules:

• Draw names: A week before the party, A time you set, or When I press Draw now. A party more than a week away starts at a week before.
• Spending limit: whole dollars, or No limit.
• Names can be drawn again until: when the party starts, a day before, or a time you set. Once names are drawn, Draw again sits under this rule. Past that time, it says when drawing again closed.

Who joins

A guest who said yes sees Join the gift exchange on their page and checks who on their answer is in. Children start unchecked. Saying yes is not joining. A co-host who has no answer of their own joins from the tab with Join the exchange. After names are drawn it reads Join late, and you wait to be fitted in like any late guest.

Nobody draws themselves or anybody on their own answer. To keep two other people from drawing each other, add them under Keep apart on the tab before names are drawn.

Drawing names

Names are drawn at the time you set, or when you press Draw now. It needs at least three people, and no one answer can hold more than half of them.

Nobody sees who drew whom. Not you, not your co-hosts, not anyone who runs the event. The tab says who has not opened their name yet, and Nudge sends that person one email, at most once every 48 hours.

After the draw

• Someone who joins late is listed as joined after the draw. Fit them in places them without changing anyone who has already opened their name, or asks before it does.
• Someone who leaves, or is taken off their answer, leaves a gap. When a guest leaves, the gap closes by itself; otherwise the tab says one person needs a new name, with Fix.
• Draw again, in the Gift exchange settings, gives everyone a new name, until the time you set. It asks first, saying how many people have seen a name. Anyone who had already opened theirs gets an email saying names were drawn again, and their page says the name is new until they open it.

At the party

From the start of the party, Reveal lets each person see who their gift was from.