Setting up the committee: who does what
How big does a yearbook committee need to be, which roles do you actually need, and how do you stop two people ending up doing everything? Roles, division, handovers.
Almost every yearbook that goes wrong goes wrong the same way: two people do everything. Not because the others are lazy, but because nobody knows what exactly their part is. “We’ll do it together” isn’t a division of labour, it’s an announcement that somebody will take it on later.
A committee is therefore not a circle of friends with good intentions. It is a list of responsibilities.
How big?
Rough rule of thumb: one committee member per ten to fifteen people in the year group — so six to nine people for 90 students. Bigger doesn’t mean faster. From about twelve people it tips over: coordinating costs more time than the work, and decisions need three attempts.
More important than the size is the division. A committee where everyone is allowed to do everything is a committee where nobody feels responsible.
The four roles you actually need
There are twenty conceivable roles. Four of them carry the project; everything else is support.
1. Editorial
Responsible for text and content: setting the profile questions, chasing course reports, sifting quotes, proofreading at the end. This is the role with the most even load across the year — and the one everything hangs off in the end.
Needs: two people, at least one of whom enjoys writing and spots mistakes.
2. Photo editing
Responsible for photos: collecting, sorting, discarding. This is the part everyone underestimates. Photos arrive in the wrong formats, too small, twice or not at all — and without somebody tidying it up every week, you have 600 unsorted images in March.
Needs: two patient people. No prior knowledge required, see Good leavers’ photos without a photographer.
3. Layout
Responsible for how it looks: picking templates, setting the page order, looking after free pages, handing over the print files. It starts late (around February) but then has the most intense phase.
Needs: one or two people with an eye for the visual. No design degree — see Layout that doesn’t look like Word.
4. Finance
Responsible for money: sponsors, pre-orders, printing costs, the accounts. The only role that should genuinely go to one person rather than three — shared bookkeeping regularly ends in a reconstruction from screenshots.
Needs: one reliable person and one who reads the numbers alongside.
What doesn’t need its own role: the motto, rankings, polls. Those are votes the year group handles itself — somebody sets them up and announces the result. A “motto committee” is a meeting, not a role.
The role nobody plans for
Somebody who keeps the overview. Not the boss, not the spokesperson — the person who knows what’s currently open and asks about it once a week. In practice that is often the year-group representative, and in practice it is exactly that person who burns out in May when their job is “everything that’s left”.
Make it a role with a clear, small task: the weekly status. Not the catching up.
Divide, don’t just name
A responsibility that only exists in the minutes isn’t one. It has to be mirrored in permissions, or every question lands back with one person.
In AbiHive you create committees and give each one its areas. What that achieves:
- Whoever is responsible for photos can manage the gallery — and only that.
- Whoever is responsible for finance sees the pre-orders, not the quotes.
- The year group can see who to ask about what. That alone takes half the messages off the person in charge.
- When a task is passed on, you change the person in the committee, not the password.
One note that matters in practice: moderation stays with the main administrator. Reports about content — somebody feels hurt by a quote or a comment — don’t go to a specialist committee but to full administration. A report always names who is complaining about whom, and that is not information for half the year group.
The first meeting: one hour, five decisions
Keep the first meeting short and decision-oriented. Five points are enough:
- Fill the roles — by name, not “somebody from the group”.
- Schedule the motto vote — a date, not “soon”.
- Set a price range — what may a copy cost? See What does a yearbook cost.
- Draw up a backwards schedule — from the leavers’ ball, see Schedule for a new year group.
- A fixed weekly slot — 20 minutes, same time, even when nothing is due. Meetings you have to call don’t happen.
What happens if somebody drops out
It happens. A school year is long, and people drop out — usually not with an announcement but by not responding. Two things make it harmless:
- No role has only one person except finance. Every other role has a second who knows where things are.
- Nothing lives on a private device. The most common real loss isn’t somebody leaving, it’s the 400 photos on a phone whose owner has stopped replying.
Takeaways
- One member per ten to fifteen people. More gets slower.
- Four roles: editorial, photo editing, layout, finance. Everything else is support.
- Finance with one person, everything else staffed twice.
- Responsibility without permissions is a suggestion. Responsibility with your own areas is a division.
What that division looks like in the product: features at a glance and the step-by-step guide.
More from Organisation
Schedule for a new year group: one school year, twelve stages
When do you start the yearbook, and what is due when? The process across a whole school year — with the dates that follow backwards from the leavers' ball.
Handing over to the next year group
Every year a committee starts from zero — even though the knowledge is already in the building. What to pass on, in what form, and the one hour that saves the next year group weeks.
How to get the year group to take part
“Nobody fills anything in” is the most common problem of any yearbook — and almost always a design problem, not a motivation problem. What actually produces responses.