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Gift guide

Group gift ideas that are not everyone chipping in for money

Most group gift advice ends in the same place: everyone puts money into a pot and you buy one bigger thing. That is fine for a bike. It is thin for a birthday, because the finished gift says nothing about the people who paid for it.

There is a second kind of group gift, where everyone puts in something of themselves instead of money. Those are the ones people keep.

The reason the voice version travels well is that it holds the thing a group card is reaching for and never quite gets. Fifteen signatures on a card is fifteen names. Fifteen voices is fifteen people saying the thing out loud.

The voices version is Chorus. It asks the least of the organiser, because everyone records their own part, and the book comes back with all of them in it. Gathering costs nothing; you order when it is ready.

Questions people ask

What are good group gift ideas that are not just money?

There is a second kind of group gift, where everyone puts in something of themselves instead of money. Those are the ones people keep.

What is a good gift from the whole family?

A book of voices, where each person records a short message and it becomes one keepsake. The least work for the organiser, because everyone does their own part from their phone.

Start a book