You put your hand up in a common room in October. It sounded like an afternoon of work. It is now February, forty-one people have paid, eighty-six have not, and someone has just reopened the argument about the design in a group chat with two hundred members in it.
Sixth form and college leavers hoodies are harder to organise than school ones for a structural reason: nobody has any authority. A head of year can tell a Year 11 cohort what is happening. You cannot tell your friends anything. What follows is the order that actually works, in the order you should do it.
First, attach a member of staff to it
Not to do the work. To be the name on the paperwork. A head of sixth form, a tutor, or the student union link can do three things you cannot: approve the use of the school or college name and logo, open a route for collecting money that is not a personal bank account, and apply pressure to people who ignore you.
Ask them one specific question early on: can payments go through the college's existing online payment system, the one used for trips? If the answer is yes, you have just removed the single worst part of this job. If the answer is no, you need to solve it another way before you take a penny from anyone. Many institutions also already have a supplier they buy school and college uniform from, and that relationship is worth using rather than starting from scratch.
The design argument needs a deadline, not a consensus
Two hundred people will never agree on a design. If you wait for agreement you will still be waiting in June, and what you eventually order will be a compromise nobody actually likes. Run it as a process with an end date instead.
- Open suggestions for a fixed window. One week is plenty.
- A small group of three or four shortlists two options. Say who those people are in advance so it does not look like a stitch-up afterwards.
- One vote, with a stated closing time.
- The result stands. Write that rule down at step one, so the loudest person cannot reopen it at step four.
Take anything involving the institution's name, crest or logo to your staff contact before the vote rather than after. Finding out that the college will not approve the winning design is a much worse conversation than finding out it was never an option.
Nobody should be fronting this on a personal card
Somewhere in every sixth form order there is one student who paid a large balance on their own card and spent six weeks getting it back in five-pound increments. That person is usually the organiser, and it is usually where the friendships strain.
In order of preference: the college's own payment system, then a shared collection link with a hard closing date and a visible running total, then nothing else. Cash is not a system. If money does end up sitting in a personal account, treat it as money you are holding rather than money you have, and keep a record everyone can see of who has paid, when, and how much.
Be careful what you promise about refunds. Once garments are produced with names on them they cannot be returned or resold by anyone, which means a person who pulls out after production has effectively bought a hoodie. Say that clearly at the point of collecting money, not at the point of refusing a refund.
Money first, names second
The instinct is to open a form asking for name, size and nickname, get a lovely list of two hundred people, and then chase payment for six weeks. Do it the other way round. Payment is what gets you onto the list. No payment, no row on the spreadsheet, no name on the back.
"I'll transfer tomorrow" counts as not paid. This is not you being difficult, it is the only version of this job that finishes. Set one deadline, publicise it in three separate places, and hold it once. The organiser who holds the first deadline never has to hold a second one.
Sizing is the one thing you cannot fix afterwards
Branded garment sizing varies enormously between manufacturers. A medium in one brand is a large in another, so asking people what size they usually wear produces a list of confident guesses rather than data.
Ask your supplier for a physical size set and run a fitting session, ideally on a day when people are already in the building. A size set removes most sizing disputes before they happen. Record the size against the payment record so the two never drift apart. And be blunt with your cohort about why it matters: because printed garments cannot be returned or resold, a hoodie ordered in the wrong size is not a returns problem, it is a wasted hoodie that somebody has already paid for.
Your cohort never meets in one room, so stop pretending it does
A sixth form or college year is spread across subject blocks, sometimes across sites. Some people are part-time, some are on placement, some are resitting and attached to nobody in particular. A poster in one common room reaches about a third of them, and a message in a two-hundred-person group chat scrolls past the rest.
Borrow the structure that already exists. Find one contact per tutor group or subject block and make them responsible for their own people. Keep one channel for announcements only, so deadlines stay findable, and a separate one for questions. Tutor time is usually the only moment in the week when the whole cohort is genuinely reachable, so use it rather than hoping.
Decide now what happens to the people who miss the deadline
There will be latecomers, and they will ask you personally, and you will be tired. Decide the answer while you are still calm.
- Whether a second, smaller order is possible at all depends on your supplier and the time left. Ask that question when you request the quote rather than promising anything.
- Agree who stores the boxes when they arrive, and where. Somebody's hallway is not a plan.
- Fix a handout day and time, and say what happens to unclaimed garments after study leave starts.
- Keep the payment record until the last hoodie is in someone's hands. Not until the order is placed.
Get those settled and the job stops being a running argument and becomes a short list of tasks with dates on them. When your cohort has a design and a rough number, request a quote for your sixth form leavers hoodies and tell us what stage you are at. We will tell you what is realistic in the time you have, including whether your timescale is tight enough that you should be worrying about it now.