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Can your camp run without you?
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I got a call this week from a camp that runs day camp in two cities. They want to add more. You’re probably saying, “Oh, that’s a nice problem to have.” But really, the questions and issues they’re facing apply, in many ways, to most camps and operations. They know they can’t just take the current setup and multiply it by three by force of personality alone. Their program works because they are managing it. Every day, in every corner. They can feel when something is off. What they need to grow is a way for that same instinct to travel to a site where they aren’t personally standing each morning at drop-off. Scaling to new sites is a small slice of what I love discussing with camps. The underlying problem behind it is nearly universal. Because camps push into new territory in all kinds of ways. A better summer than the last one. A second-in-command who can cover a real sick day. A hire who does not need 900+ days to figure out how the place runs. Whatever the specific version, the underlying question is the same. Every camp has this problemThe hardest thing about camp is that so much of it lives in feeling, the vibes, the instincts. The director and core team carry most of the operation in their head. Some chicken-scratch lists on the desk. Maybe a few color-coded folders. But the actual how-we-do-this-here rarely lives anywhere except the director’s own memory. Which is fine on any given Tuesday. But what happens when the director isn’t there? What in your camp only lives in one head right now? Set the mission statement and the marketing copy aside. Think about the operating knowledge. The stuff you do without thinking that keeps the place running. What of that could someone else execute if you had to step away tomorrow? I learned this the hard way on Long Island while spending 3+ years overseeing seven day camps across Nassau and Suffolk County. One camp was in the Hamptons. Another was in a completely different neighborhood on the other end of the island. Same track of land between Manhattan and Montauk, but a lot of differences in between. Every one of those camps needed training that traveled. Every one still needed to have its own personality. Standardized enough that quality stayed consistent, but loose enough that site directors could lead their own way. That balance is what any camp trying to durably grow eventually has to build, whether they know it or not. Where to actually startGetting what is in your head out of your head is smaller work than it sounds. A staff training a new hire can run without needing you to translate. A parent communication protocol someone else could execute. An enrollment process that does not collapse the second you are sick. Any one of them is a start. Every camp eventually faces one of these moments. A scaling decision. A key hire. A retirement. A summer that needs diagnosis. A sick day at the worst possible time. Every one of them goes better when the director’s head is not the whole company. You don’t have to be building new camps to start writing down what works at yours. And there’s no better time to start than right now. Sincerely, Senior Consultant at Immersive1st Learn more about Immersive1st's Approach |
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Camps love to send out surveys. End-of-summer parent surveys. Staff surveys. Camper surveys. For many camps, it's surveys all the way down. Don't get me wrong, surveys are great. Camps need to collect as much data and feedback as possible, whenever possible. Sometimes it's the only way to know whether something is working, or worse, not working at all. This is all to say: surveys are great! But they don't get the whole story, not by a long shot. Surveys tend to index on the extremes. The...
A director in his ninth summer at a camp gets a phone call in the middle of July. It’s about the investors and the ownership structure. It’s about a possible sale nobody saw coming. The call ends. He has 600 campers on the property who are expecting a great summer. You probably already know which situation I am talking about. It has been about as close to national camp news as anything in the space gets. I am not naming names here. The specifics matter less than the leadership question...
Let’s take a look at some numbers from the summer: 15 states 5,120 miles behind the wheel 10,000+ air miles across three round trips to Wisconsin, Georgia, and Arizona 80+ meal stops at Chipotle, Starbucks, and mom-and-pop taco places This wasn’t one planned mega-trip or anything like that. It wasn’t even family vacation! It was visiting camps all over the map. And yes, I catch some flack from my accountant who looks at my expense reports every quarter and says something along the lines of:...