A milestone birthday gift from all the grandchildren

Ask each grandchild for one photograph and one sentence about it. Not an open album, not "send me anything you've got." The single-photo ask is the one that gets answered, and the material that comes back is better because a person choosing one picture picks one that means something.

Give yourself about three weeks. Most of that is other people being slow rather than anything to do with production.

Why one photograph each, and not an album

An open request sounds generous and produces very little. It asks each person to choose, which means deciding what is good enough, which means doing it later.

Asking for exactly one removes the decision. The reply rate is markedly better, and so is the material — you get the photograph somebody has been meaning to show everyone, rather than eleven near-identical shots from the same afternoon.

The sentence matters more than people expect. She wore that hat to our wedding and refused to take it off for the photographs is the part that survives; the photograph on its own does not carry it.

What to actually send

Something close to this, in the group chat you already have:

I'm having something made for Nana's eightieth from all of us. Can you send me one photograph of you with her, and a sentence about what's happening in it? I need them by the 12th.

Three things are doing the work: the number is one, the sentence gives the photograph its meaning, and the date is concrete and earlier than the real one.

The timing, honestly

Three weeks before the date is comfortable. Two is workable. Under a week and you are relying on people answering first time, which is not how families work — at that point ask the two or three most likely to reply rather than everyone, or make it from what you already have.

If only three of seven reply

This is the thing organisers worry about most, and it is worth saying plainly: a thin response does not produce a thin result. Nothing here requires a particular number of contributors, and nobody who did not answer gets chased on your behalf.

That takes the pressure off the asking, which tends to make the asking go better.

The "has everything" problem

An eightieth or a ninetieth is usually for somebody who has been buying their own things for sixty years. The honest answer for a person who has everything is something that did not exist until you had it made — and it only works if you bring the specific thing. The cardigan. The cup of tea. The dog that was not supposed to be on the sofa.

Without those details it is a well-made object about nobody in particular. Signature is the size most often chosen when several people are putting their names to one piece.

More on the chasing itself in how to get relatives to actually send you the photos.