Free tool
Collect every address for your graduation announcements
Announcements are the one part of graduation that runs on other people's information. You know exactly who should hear the news: grandparents, aunts and uncles, your parents' oldest friends, the neighbors from the house you grew up in, the teacher who wrote your recommendation. You just don't have a single one of their mailing addresses.
Your parents have some of them, in a drawer, from the last time they mailed holiday cards. Half have moved since. This is how a stack of announcements ends up sitting on a kitchen counter until July.
Mailbook fixes it with one link. You share it, everyone types in their own address, and you end up with one clean list. It is free, there is no limit on how many addresses you collect, and the people you ask never have to make an account.
Start earlier than feels necessary
Working backwards from the ceremony:
- Order announcements 6 to 8 weeks before graduation: most printers need two weeks, and you want a buffer.
- Mail them two to three weeks before the ceremony, or within two weeks after. Either is fine; later than that and it reads as an afterthought.
- Collect addresses before you order, not after. It is the only step that depends on other people replying, so it is the only one that can't be rushed at the end.
In practice that means starting in February or March for a May or June graduation.
You are sharing news, not asking for data
This is worth getting right, because it changes the response rate more than anything else on this page. "Send me your address" is a chore you are handing someone. "I'm graduating in May and I'm sending announcements. Where should yours go?" is news, and the address is just how they receive it.
Same link, same form, completely different reply rate. Lead with the news.
How it works
- Create your list. Pick Graduation as the occasion and write a line in your own words. About a minute.
- Share one link. Text it, email it, put it in the family group chat. One link works for everyone: you don't need one per person.
- They fill in their own address. No account, no app, and it works on a phone. They know how their address is written; you don't.
- Download the finished list. Excel or CSV for whoever prints your announcements, or a print-ready PDF laid out for label sheets.
Click here to see what the people you ask will see.
What to write when you ask
Short, specific, link at the end so it's easy to tap:
"I'm graduating in May! We're sending out announcements and I don't have everyone's address. Could you add yours? Takes a minute:"
If a parent is doing the asking, say who it's for, half the list knows the family better than the graduate:
"Emma graduates in May and we're mailing announcements. Would you add your address so we know where to send hers?"
Run it from both sides. Your list and your parents' list barely overlap, and the second one is usually longer.
Who actually gets one
An announcement is not an invitation. Ceremony tickets are almost always limited, so the announcement goes to a much wider circle than the people who can attend, and it carries no expectation that anyone travel.
The usual list: grandparents and great-grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins, close family friends, your parents' colleagues who have known you since you were small, teachers and coaches who mattered, and the neighbors. Thirty to a hundred people is normal. It is almost always more than you first guess, which is the other reason to start collecting early.
About gifts, honestly
Plenty of the people on that list will send a card back, often with a check in it. That is a real part of why the address list matters: it works in both directions, and a relative who never gets an announcement has no way to send one.
But keep it out of the announcement itself. Printing a Venmo handle or a payment QR code on a graduation announcement is the fastest way to have it read as an invoice, and it is the specific thing etiquette columns complain about every single spring. If someone asks how to send something (and they will), tell them then. The announcement's job is to share the news.
For that moment, have an answer ready. Mailbook's graduation money card gives you one personal page: whoever asks gets the link, chips in dollars through PayPal or Venmo straight to your own account, and a printed card arrives with their note in it. The announcement stays an announcement, and nobody has to mail a check.
Turning the list into envelopes
Mailbook exports your addresses as an Excel or CSV file with each part in its own column, the format announcement printers ask for when you upload a list for envelope addressing. If you would rather do it yourself, the same list comes out as a print-ready PDF fitted to standard label sheets. Our label guide covers the sizing.
Keep the list afterwards. It is the thank-you note list four weeks later, and thank-you notes are where the addresses get hunted down a second time if you didn't.
Get started
Mailbook is free, unlimited, and used by over 100,000 people to collect more than five million addresses. Nobody you ask has to sign up for anything.