How to run a Secret Santa for a remote team

A remote Secret Santa is the office game with a shipping problem. Gifts have to cross distance and time zones, and nobody can just hand anything over. Most of the work is in the planning around the draw. Here's the order we'd do it in, starting from the date the gifts have to arrive.

Work backwards from the reveal

Pick the day everyone opens their gift together, then count back. Shipping is the part that slips, so give it more room than it seems to need. A rough schedule for a team that's mostly in one country looks like this:

These numbers are a starting point. If the team is spread across continents, add a week to the shipping window and ask people to say early if customs forms are going to be a problem. The "Gifts on" date you enter when you set up the exchange is what everyone sees on their card, so it should be the reveal day, not the ship-by date. Put the ship-by date in the note to everyone, which holds up to 500 characters of plain text.

Money, and what the budget includes

The thing that goes wrong most is a budget that's silent about shipping. Say whether the number includes it. For gifts that cross borders, say it does, because shipping across a border can cost as much as the present. If the team is paid in different currencies, a single figure written in one of them is fine as a rough guide, but say so, since $25 doesn't mean the same thing in every city. Pick a number the person with the tightest budget on the team is comfortable with, and when in doubt, round down.

It's also worth saying out loud that a digital gift, a gift card or a donation in someone's name counts. It costs nothing to ship and it solves the address problem below for anyone who'd rather not hand one over.

Addresses are the real privacy question

A physical gift needs a street address, and a home address is something many people don't want circulating in a team chat. Three ways to handle it:

• Ship to an office or a nearby relative where one exists, or to a pickup point.
• Put the address in the wishlist. A wishlist on this site is sealed with a key held only by the writer and by the person buying for them, so the one person who needs the address is the only one who can read it. The sensible order is to wait until the links have been handed out and the organizer has pressed Forget the links, so no card exists that the organizer could still open.
• Let people opt out of physical gifts. Anyone who says so when they sign up gets a gift card or an e-book instead.

Don't ask for addresses on a shared sign-up sheet. A document that fifty people can open ends up holding fifty home addresses.

Running the draw

The organizer enters the names on the Secret Santa generator, picks the gift date and budget, and presses Draw names. Each person gets their own link to a sealed card. Send each link privately, by direct message, not into the whole team channel, since anyone in the channel could open anyone's card. If somebody does, the real owner sees "opened before." Nobody gives out an email address anywhere in this, which matters if the team doesn't share one company directory, as with a volunteer group or a community. The longer comparison of ways to do it is in Secret Santa without email.

Questions across a distance

In person you'd ask a coworker what they like. Remotely you can't, and a guess about someone you've never met ends in a mug. Two features help. Each person can write a wishlist that only their Santa can read. And a Santa can ask a question without giving themselves away, such as "what's your shoe size?" or "do you have a favorite coffee?", and the person answers without knowing who asked. It's a short thread attached to the card, not a chat room.

The reveal

A call works better than a thread, because gifts are opened live and people guess. From the gift date on, a Santa can choose to post "It was me" into the thread, so anyone who wants the surprise intact can keep it until the call. Nothing is revealed automatically, and nobody is outed by the site.

When someone drops out or goes quiet

It will happen with a big enough team. If a person leaves before shipping, the organizer edits the list on the exchange page and redraws. Every old card stops opening, so everyone needs the new link and wishlists start from scratch, which is why it's best to settle the list before anyone starts shopping. If someone drops after gifts have been bought, a redraw would strand the work already done, so pick another way. Ask for a volunteer to cover the gap, or have the organizer buy a small backup gift for the person whose Santa vanished. Say in the original announcement what the plan is, so nobody's surprised.

The couples-and-housemates problem looks different on a team, where the exclusions are often manager and direct report, two people from the same project, or people who share a desk. The rules for those are the same as for couples, and Secret Santa for couples covers how many you can add before the draw breaks.

When it's over

The exchange deletes itself 30 days after the gift date, and never later than 120 days after you drew it. If the team wants it gone sooner, the organizer presses End it now, and every card, wishlist and note is removed from the server immediately. The rules worth agreeing on before the draw in the first place, like dates, budget and what happens to a late gift, are in Secret Santa rules.