THE PAST 12 MONTHS
WOAH! In the last year a lot has changed for the world, us, and most importantly for this memo, TSCS. Some of the notable changes:
We realized we needed help. In Spring 2021, Paige Moffett came on board and launched our membership program, which has transformed the way we do business. We have doubled down on the community aspect. It is much better and the heart of TSCS. THANK YOU, PAIGE!
We have committed to a seminar model that is more virtual. From a revenue standpoint, these keep TSCS running. They are also great value and essential content, and help us also make change in our industry and our world. We think there are big opportunities to more easily run them, make them more impactful, and increase revenue.
The retreat is back. Forty two people gathered last month in New Jersey for the first TSCS retreat in 2 years. It was full of tears, excitement, and community. The energy and lovefest was wild, and we created a welcoming community that brought some incredible new folks in. The membership program is the heart, but the retreats are the soul of what we do.
Allison Krabill is joining the squad as our executive director! This is going to give us even more bandwidth to get more done, grow, sustain our already-strong community, and make more impact.
We are bringing on exceptional camp consultants as faculty members to provide a steady stream of content, thought leadership, and connection within our membership group and the greater camp community. We’ll be announcing our first class of faculty this Thursday; stay tuned!
WIDE-EYED THINKING
Here is the thing: The Summer Camp Society strives to be the best possible way to help camps serve kids more effectively in inclusive, empowered, and compassionate communities. The work we do has ripples across the country and the world. It sounds grandiose, and it is. When we are able to help camp directors be more effective, shift a mindset, and just feel better, the impact is exponential. Taking care of the camp leaders who are a part of TSCS impacts hundreds of thousands of kids every year, and their families/communities. It makes a difference.
LET’S LEVEL UP
Thinking about what we do…it falls into mostly 5 categories. Maybe we’ll have more later, but here they are for now:
Membership
Seminars
The Retreat
Content Creation
Individual Trainings/Consulting
With these five in mind, here is how we are going to move forward:
Membership: The membership program is our sustaining community of practice. Where friendships and collaboration have a home, and where people who care about making their camps and the world better can lean on and learn from each other. What if we set a goal of defining this group as the best virtual community of camp leaders helping each other build more effective, equitable, and efficient organizations? For that to actually happen, it needs to grow and we need to bring that to more camps. Then, what if we set a goal of growing the membership community to 100 camp professionals while at the same time increasing the benefits of TSCS membership by Summer 2023? That is a hard goal, but we are up to it.
Seminars: There is a lot to do here. We’ve been running seminars for several years, but have really increased these offerings over the past 12 months. They started off in a haphazard way and showed varying success, but the impact of the seminars has grown as we’ve partnered with extraordinarily talented and wise facilitators like Simone Gamble from OAAARS, Briana Mitchell & Makela Elvy from S’more Melanin, Chris Rehs-Dupin from Transplaining, and Laura Kriegel & Allison Klee from Camp Stomping Ground.
We think we can do a lot better by building repeatable systems that make it easier for incredible facilitators to run these types of learning experiences, for us to market them, and for participants to explain the value to decision-makers in their organizations. We so appreciate how these seminars allow participants to do a deep dive on topics that matter, and bring back actionable change to their organizations and communities. What if we set a goal here to run at least 10 seminars in the 2022-23 school year, serving 300 participants?
The Retreat(s): The in-person retreat is so fun. We are cocky for sure, but we think it is the best professional development money you can spend at camp. By going to the retreat, you make actual friends and have actual helpful people in your network that you can actually call to help you do stuff. You also leave with tangible takeaways and all that, but the key is that you have people to call for the unexpected problems. In other words, you have a real community. The other magic about the retreat is that you get your spark back–you remember why you are doing this work, and why it matters. For many of us, the retreat is the fuel we need to keep going. It’s camp magic for us. Can we run two retreats next year? Yes. Let’s do two retreats with 50 people each–one in the late fall and one in the late winter/early spring. (Pss… want to make sure you get the info for our next retreat? Here’s a quick form to make sure you don’t miss out!)
Content Creation: In this category, we have the blog, webinars, videos, social (Instagram + Facebook + LinkedIn + TikTok), emails, and the Free Stuff section of the Website. With Allison coming on board we have a huge opportunity to take all these up in a big way. Gary Vee outlines the Pillar Content Strategy here - The basic idea is from one piece of content we create a whole bunch more. The big logic is the more we grow our readership, email list, and social media following, the easier it is to make an impact. We think investing time here drives everything else. Plus, the content we put out helps camp leaders grow and organizations make changes in a very accessible way. And, we need a GOAL! How about: grow our email list to 5,000 and Insta followers to 3,000 by Summer 2023?
Individual Trainings/Consulting: To us, this is the least thought out and has a lot of room for brainstorming and thinking. We will bring in good revenue from training and speaking engagements this year, but there aren’t great systems. We can imagine a world where we use our reach to help other people (like our seminar collaborators) get and manage speaking engagements. Or maybe where we have subcontractors that help us run projects. We’re not sure what to do here and we think formalizing this and building a good plan for it is a classic fall project. Camp leaders: What do you need? How can we help
BIG GOAL!
We think the real way we are going to be able to make an impact and change the camp world is by growing TSCS like we outlined above. We know we are making a big impact within our current community, but our community is relatively small compared with the greater camp industry. It’s extremely small compared to the youth development community as a whole. We want to maintain the small-community feel of TSCS and expand its reach; we want to have more camp directors stick with this challenging yet important work; we want to bring the magic, joy and fun of camp to people who are usually the ones giving it (and not receiving it as much). But, most of all, we want to help people leverage camp as a tool to change the world.
GRATITUDES
To Allison and Paige: We couldn’t be more excited to be working with you! You both bring incredible skill sets into our organization and we can already feel such big momentum and push with you on our team. We’re grateful for you and your commitment to our mission and community.
To Our Members: There was a point in spring 2021 where we weren’t sure if we could keep going. The pandemic killed ALL of our business–we’d gone without revenue for almost a year. We’d both started to seek out other sources of income. You convinced us that TSCS was instrumental in your lives and worth saving. You helped us articulate the vision for a sustaining membership, and you shared your belief in our movement. You’ve all become incredible friends and we’re so grateful for you!
To Camp: You’ve taught us both and given us both so much. You are a force in this world. It is our honor and privilege to help you not just stay relevant but continue to be one of the most relevant and important levers we have for societal change, and we’re grateful to be able to do that through The Summer Camp Society. We can’t wait to see what’s next for us and for you!!
WITH SO MUCH LOVE!
Jack & Kurtz
JACK SCHOTT
CO-FOUNDER CAMP STOMPING GROUND
CO-FOUNDER THE SUMMER CAMP SOCIETY
JACK@THESUMMERCAMPSOCIETY.COM
SARAH KURTZ MCKINNON
CO-FOUNDER, THE SUMMER CAMP SOCIETY
CAMP DIRECTOR AT HEART
KURTZ@THESUMMERCAMPSOCIETY.COM
