Secret Santa tips and ideas?

[Soliloquy]

I've promised my members a Secret Santa type of exchange this year, and they're raring to go. I've never run a Secret Santa type of exchange before though, and was wondering if anyone had any tips for a vBulletin-based one.

Should I just send everyone to a site like Elfster? (If so, which of the many Secret Santa organizing sites is best?)

Am I better off handling everything myself and possibly introducing some fun variations to the tradition? (For instance, I only just learned today that some Secret Santa exchanges feature questions for the participants to get to know each other's likes and dislikes better. Before that I figured I'd just tell everyone to read their assignee's old posts.)

Are there any mods/techniques I should use? Start a social group for the participants and base everything there? What has worked for you?

[Wayne Luke]

Have never done a secret santa in a forum before. A few years ago we had one in my World of Warcraft guild. Out of 112 people in the guild, only 24 participated.

In that situation, we all ended up creating "Santa's Elf" characters and sending an semi-anonymous email to the person we were assigned to. That allowed us to ask questions about what they liked, disliked, favorites, etc... My assignee like Anime and Manga so I ended up getting him a nice hardbound book of Vampire Hunter artwork. Was very difficult to find because we only had a $20.00 allotment. I forget what my wife ended up sending her assignee. In return I got two 750 ml bottles of Hard Apple Cider (one the best gifts ever) and my wife got a Mage t-shirt from Jinx.

You might open a thread where each participant answers a series of questions and everyone else can see the answers. Make sure to set a limit on how much they can spend as well. We did $20.00 as I said but I found it kind of restrictive and would have preferred $30.00. However most people are on budgets so limits are good.

We didn't do a secret santa last year. Many people were hurting because of the economy. Unfortunately the guild no longer exists and we all spread out across the different servers.

The questions that I sent were:
red, yellow or blue?
tshirt, polo shirt or tie?
rootbeer, beer, whiskey?
television, movies, book?
robotech, little mermaid, g.i. joe?

[Soliloquy]

Thanks Wayne. I've set up a separate forum and A. Nonny Mouse forum/email accounts, plus will be asking interview questions. I've also assigned them all codenames; they seem to like that.

[BabyDesigner]

Oh ill be back! Im having my first secret santa this year too, so some of these tips and ideas sound great!