What changes at forty
A twelve-person exchange runs on goodwill. Someone draws names out of a mug, everyone remembers who they got, and the one person who forgets asks the organiser. At forty, three things stop working at once.
First, the organiser can no longer know every match. If you draw names by hand you end up holding the list, which means you know who is buying for you, and the person who sees you with the list assumes you peeked. Second, the drop-out rate is real. In a group of forty, expect two or three people to leave the company, go on leave, or simply not show up. Each one breaks a chain. Third, the reminders become a job. Forty people means forty wishlists to chase and forty gifts to confirm.
The fix for all three is the same. Use something that draws for you, keeps the matches from you, and lets people see their own match on their own phone.
Decide these four things before you invite anyone
Every question you get in December is one of these four. Settle them first and put them in the invitation.
- The budget. One number, in one currency. ₱500 or $20 is the common office figure. See the budget guide for how to pick it.
- The date and place. The exchange itself, not the draw. The draw happens at least two weeks earlier.
- Who is in. Whole company, one floor, one department. If you have more than one floor, read the part on departments below before you decide.
- Whether gifts are opened in public. Opening in front of everyone is the Filipino default and doubles the fun. It also means the budget has to be fair, because a ₱200 mug next to a ₱1,500 speaker is visible to the whole room.
Departments, and whether to split
A single draw of forty works, but it has one weakness. People buy better for someone they know. If Finance draws Warehouse, the gift is a candle. If Finance draws Finance, the gift is the exact coffee they drink.
You have three options. Run one exchange and let anyone draw anyone. Run one exchange with a rule that people draw within their own department, which keeps gifts personal and still lets the whole company open them together. Or run one exchange per department, each with its own host, which is right once you pass about sixty people or when the departments are on different floors with different budgets.
On WhoSanta the second option is a setting. Tag each person with a department and pick draw within your own team. The third option is what the Team plan is for: one payment, one exchange per office, each with its own host.
Getting forty people in without chasing them
Do not collect names by hand. Send one message with a join link and a code, and let people type their own name. The people who join are the people who are in. The people who do not join by the deadline are not, and that is the cleanest possible rule.
Paste the email list from HR straight into the invite box, or upload the CSV. Then post the same link in the group chat, because half the office reads chat before email. Give it five working days. Send one reminder on day three, to the whole group, not to individuals.
Set the join deadline two days before the draw. That gap is for the two people who message you at 11pm.
The draw, and the three rules that save it
Draw at least two weeks before the exchange so nobody is buying on the last day. Add exclusion rules before you draw, not after. The two that matter in an office are couples who work together, and a manager and their direct report, because a gift between those two is never read as just a gift.
Announce the draw. One message: names are drawn, open the link to see yours, the budget is ₱500, the exchange is on the nineteenth. Then stop talking about it for a week. People need silence to shop.
When someone drops out after the draw, do not redraw everyone. Remove the one person. Their Santa quietly takes over the person they were buying for, and nobody else's match changes. If you have to redraw the whole group, do it once and early.
The last week
Four days before the exchange, send a reminder to anyone whose wishlist is still empty. Not to everyone, because the people who filled it in will feel nagged. Two days before, remind everyone to wrap and label with the giftee's name only. On the day, have one person collect gifts at the door and lay them out, so the opening is a reveal and not a scramble.
At the opening, go in a random order and let each person guess their Santa before the Santa stands up. That guess is the whole game. It is also why the host must not know the matches, because the moment the room suspects the host knows, the guessing stops.