Covid-19 - Three Projects We Are Working On At Stomping Ground

Mar 18

Woah.

This “off season” is wild. At Stomping Ground, the camp I help run, we are in the process of moving to a new property and renovating it to be ready for camp this summer. You can see more about renovating our new camp here. This seemed like an insurmountable task. THEN THIS!

My guess is many of you are feeling similarly. Running camp seems to have become an all hands on deck affair even in normal times, much less in times of global unrest. To be honest I love it. I love the rush of too many things to do, not enough time, and the excitement of figuring out new ways to push things forward. To be honest, I am tired. I imagine you might feel similarly.

Right now, like you probably are, I am scared and trying to make a plan. Covid-19 has shaken all of our plans to the core and we don’t even run “off season” programming. Lots of camps across the country are not only preparing for this summer but also reacting to canceling groups and losing revenue.

I certainly don’t know what is to come; no one does. At the moment we are hoping to run camp this summer, but I am becoming more and more convinced we will all be looking at what happens if we can’t run our conventional summer programming.

This is just a look in at what we are doing to maybe help. As we are silo-ed working on our seperate camps I hope having a tiny glimpse into how we are navigating this situation might spark some thoughts. I know I am constantly calling and texting my camp friends to see more of what they are doing. Sometimes reading a little longer form helps me get my head on straight. In other words, writing this was actually just for me.

For Stomping Ground, we are working on 3 projects this week:

Hometown Stomping Ground
Building Financial Plans for Potential Loss of Summer Revenue
Connecting with Staff, Donors, and Families

Hometown Stomping Ground (HTSG)

HTSG is the online camp platform we are building. It is a take on a part of our camp we call Downtown Stomping Ground. We were inspired by the work the team at YMCA Camp Kitaki is doing with Kitaki Worldwide. (Side note: if you haven’t joined Travis’ Slack Team for responding to Covid-19 you should. Lots of camps sharing their successes.) Also check out this resource on running an Online Comic Book Camp.

HTSG is our version of what lots of camps are doing to give families a little joy and a break from just consuming media. We are developing schedules of Zoom meetups that we are calling Virtual Options that are run mostly by our seasonal staff and hosted by one of our year round team members. You can see this week’s schedule below. So far the response has been super positive and we are adding more specific options next week.

At the moment this is all free and we are looking at ways for families to donate to help us pay the facilitators and let us level this up further. This could also be a piece of our summer plans if we can’t run in-person programming.

Building Financial Plans for Potential Loss of Summer Revenue

Covid inspired video - Learn how to play the Camp Song on the guitar!

I don’t want to spread panic, but I want to be prepared. If we can’t run summer camp, the huge majority of our revenue will be gone. Right now, we are lucky that we run on a shoestring fall/winter/spring budget and (until now) haven’t had facilities costs because we rented. We are looking at re-allocating funds, talking with our most committed donors, and developing language for camper families that have already paid in response to refunds.

The reality is we don’t have the funds to give every family a full refund, but we can be flexible. We have always been very transparent and trusting of our families and need to build a plan that continues that transparency. Right now, our plan is to let families know that if all families asked for a full refund it would likely be the end of camp, but we know that for many families they need that camp tuition to be able to safely navigate this pandemic. With that in mind we want all families to let us know if they need a full or partial refund and we can help. We are also asking that if they don’t need the refund, they can apply their current payments as a credit for next year or donate it to camp. This is risky, but we have had a great deal of success with plans like this in the past.

We also have been contacting our biggest donors to help us if that becomes necessary. Each camp’s financial situation is very different, and I would encourage you to to start working on plans now for if the summer program is unable to run how will you navigate that.

Connecting with Seasonal Staff, Donors, and Families

People are stressed. I am stressed. Connection and trust are the lifeblood of our camp business, and as we enter uncertain times the more we can do to be useful and build trust and connection, the better. In the near future I imagine we are going to need to ask for help and exceptions from our community and we need them to know we care about them too. It may seem transactional, but it isn’t. This is our family. We care about them and need to stay connected with them and let them continue to care about us.

The big thing we are doing here is texting folks and checking in. In other words, just being humans in the human world. We aren’t doing our other typical forms of sales or marketing, so we have more time in our day to do more human to human reach outs.

What is Next?

Things are changing amazingly fast and there are a million future scenarios that we can’t imagine yet. Something things we haven’t started working on are potential new policies for cleaning and connection at camp if we are able to run camp this summer. We will also have some kind of enhanced health screening if kids can come to camp, and more.

This is hard and there are a lot of challenges. Running camp is always a labor of love--now as much as ever. What you do is worth it. Camp is worth it. Your kids and families need you. You got this. Sending so much love!