Family Camp Programming & Promotion - CampHacker #67

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Building up the Best Family Camp Program

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It was great to have Megan back on the program this week as we come back around to talk about two more elements of Family Camp - Promoting it and Programming for it.   

Thanks to Catalina Island Camps director, Tom Horner, for joining us for the first time on the show!  Check out Catalina Island’s Family Camp that they run in partnership with Jean-Michel Cousteau & the Ocean Futures Society.

In our last Family Camp episode we talked about some of the big reasons why a Family Camp session  (or 3!) would help your summer camp.   On this episode we shared some great ideas of how camps can promote the program.

Now that you have a full Family Camp it’s time to run an amazing program!  

Each director on the panel had amazing ideas for the 3 kinds of programming that you typically see at Family Camp: kids only activities, adult only activities and activities for the whole family to do together.

What’s activity is the biggest hit at your Family Camp?

Tool of the Week – Make Yourself a Better Camp Director

Travis - The Promise of a Pencil 
Dan -  Nutureshock by Po Bronson & Ashley Merryman 
Gab - http://icc2014turkey.org Internation Camping Congress, 23-27 October 2014
Megan - Springpad  https://springpad.com/about
Tom - IST Sports for great snorkelling gear - http://istsports.com

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Thanks for the evening, friends.

Last Minute Marketing - CampHacker #66

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Wow! What a great show this week.    

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It is getting to that time of the year when directors get that nervous feeling in their stomach - will we be full or won’t we?    There is still plenty of time to get more kids in camp this summer.   Our co-hosts this week have all been really smart about filling their camp spaces and they were happy to share their ideas.

Dan told us something amazingly useful - Frost Valley targets their style of communication and marketing to reach 5 different audiences.  Each audience gets unique ads, unique calls or unique postcards.   For them these audiences are:

  1. unknown to us - those who know of camp or have looked at the website but we don’t know who they are

  2. families who have made inquiries - these people are “trackable” and we can keep a record of how we have reached out to them

  3. new families - ones whom have registered but haven’t been to camp before

  4. returning families who are registered

  5. returning families who are not yet registered

What are you going to do to fill your camp this year?

Tool of the Week – Make Yourself a Better Camp Director

Travis - Scat Cards 
Dan -  The Happiness Advantage by Shawn Achor
Joel - Wordle
James - fizzle.co

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Treat Your Summer Staff Right - CampHacker #65

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Providing a Special Place at Camp for Your Summer Staff

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We’ve had lots of discussions on the Camp Pros group on Facebook about how we talk to staff about putting their campers first.  I think that is essential to what we do.  

However, it was a great little reminder of our camp director responsibilities when Joel Egbert reached out to me and suggested we focus, for one episode, on putting staff first.   

I often surprised people when I said that my job was not to look after kids - Beth and I believed that our job was to look after the people who looked after the kids - our staff.

On this week’s podcast our co-hosts share some fantastic ideas of ways to make the summer experience wonderful for our staff.

It has to be a huge part of our job - we’ve got to make up for the long hours and low pay.

No, we didn’t talk about having a sundae party. We we’re thinking much bigger than that!

Tool of the Week – Make Yourself a Better Camp Director

Travis - Panasonic Lumix GX-7
Joe - Cool Tools: A Catalog of Possibilities
Gab - Theories of Small Group Development
Joel - Animoto, slideshow creator. 
Topher - Taking the example of popular websites uploaded content to give customers content in similar styles that they are used to. (ex. Look at www.espn.com and www.grantland.com and compare it to the Camp Grey website and Youtube channel.)

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Fantastic Family Camps - CampHacker #64

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Family Camps can be an awesome option for camps. Our co-hosts were unanimous in their support for the idea.

Here's are some of the reason's that we all love family camp:

  • It's a great way to give staff a break from the routine of the summer.  Some of us have camps that run at the beginning of the summer (and give staff a "practice" for the season), in the middle (a time off for some staff and a reward to work Family Camp for others), and at the send of the season (a strong farewell to the summer).
  • Family Camp allows families to "try" camp for their kids.  It's a perfect soft introduction to the routines, songs and food.
  • Family Camp allows parent's to get a feel for the people who will be looking after their children.   It builds trust. 

We hope you enjoy this show.  If you have any questions please let us know.

We're going to do a Part II episode shortly where we'll focus on what programs to run and how to promote your Family Camp.

Tool of the Week – Make Yourself a Better Camp Director

Travis - Body Beats Cards: 
Joe - Don’t Drown in Email! How to use Gmail more effectively:
Megan - Family Camp Impacts Research Project
Marty - Whole Brain Child
Heather - Pinterest

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