Crunching The Numbers

Managing and organizing your camp automatically

Baseball is famous for its obsession with statistics. Stats are often the deciding factor that turns Joe Couch Potato from detached observer into rabid fan.

For some reason, numbers are exciting. They can be compared, contrasted, spindled, mutilated and churned into factoids devoid of any real meaning (did you know that Craig Biggio hits .302 on Thursday nights in open air stadiums when they’re giving away pennants?).

Camp directors like numbers just as much as the average, or not-so-average, baseball fan. The difference is that statistics, properly handled, can make camp life a lot easier.

As in baseball, pumping out the right numbers for the right reasons can make the difference between a one-run loss and a one-run win. It’s good for a manager to know that a certain opposing hitter hits to the opposite field 83 percent of the time he faces a left-handed pitcher. Obscure, but valuable.

Camp Stats
“Ninety-nine percent of what we do here is done on the computer,” says Alan Friedman, a camp director at Camp Mah-Kee-Nac, Lenox, Mass. “We’re so much more efficient. When I came here 10 years ago they were doing everything by hand.”

Friedman and his staff have automated the management of Camp Mah-Kee-Nac by utilizing databases that create any number of useful lists, letters and forms, and have recently merged all those functions into one camp management software program called EZ-Camp by Softerware.

“We used to do our own special databases for years and this took everything that I was doing with many different things into one,” says Friedman. “It has the capacity to merge everything into Word or Excel, so I print my contracts and other forms from it. When I want to print out labels for folders I can dump it into an Excel spreadsheet and go.”

For Friedman the most important function of a database management program for his camp is organizing his campers into various groups.

With three directors, two program directors, two associate directors, and five secretaries, efficient and accurate information dissemination is a must. Everyone must be on the same page, and the same book, to ensure a smooth camp session.

“One of our program directors does a lot of our out-of-camp trip forms in Excel where he links files together,” says Friedman. “If he puts a camper’s name in, it automatically pulls up his bunk group and tribe. When we send that form down to the health center they’re able to easily pull his meds.”

As part of a camp collective known as Camp Group, Friedman says the organization handles most of the accounting and purchasing, dividing some of the management functions among member camps. For example, Friedman may handle the medical services bid process for all the camps in the group. Accounting is centralized and handled with QuickBooks.

Transporting Information
Different camps have different needs. Whatever those differences may be, the constant is the need to organize all the converging and diverging aspects of a typical camp session.

Nowhere is this more apparent than at a day camp, where hundreds, and possibly thousands of kids can come and go and engage in various activities under the supervision of numerous counselors.

For Larry Bell, director of Camp Robin Hood day camp in Toronto, one of the most daunting tasks is scheduling transportation. Rather than set up central meeting points in different areas of the city, Camp Robin Hood goes door to door to pick up its campers.

On the surface it sounds like a logistical nightmare, and easily could be, but Bell employs a network of databases tied into each other through a camp-focused management program called Camp Brain.

“When anyone registers we put them into a zone, and once you determine where the zones are and how many kids are in each one of the zones you can determine how many buses you require,” says Bell. “You can drag and drop zones onto buses – by parts of zones or the entire zones – and the program allows you to sort all of the kids in the order of pick-up. We have 1,250 kids who come to camp on any given day on 50 buses. I have a direct link to the Microsoft mapping program so that my data can be transferred to the mapping program.”

Organizing transportation is only the beginning as any number of variables need to be accounted for during the course of the day, from getting kids to the right activities to the all-important end-of-day pick-up time.

Whether managed through a camp-specific management software, an off-the-shelf database program, or a customized program, it’s most important that your engine can drive various reports that can arm your staff against just about any calamity.

“Each one of our counselors has his own group list with 10 children on it. All of the medical, behavioral and other information is noted so that our staff has an accurate understanding of what’s going on with their children,” says Bell. “With the forms and lists the counselors get from our system we’re certain that we’ve looked after their behavioral, medical and emotional needs – all of those things can be recorded and brought off the machinery easily.”

Anything that can be organized in a camp business – staffing, campers (past, present and future), billing, facilities, schedules, activities, and so on – can not only be organized in a database program, but can easily generate any number of forms and reports.

“I have a staff database organized into drawers,” says Friedman. “In two seconds I can print a re-enrollment letter, a thank-you-for-the-deposit letter or a contract letter. I create a lot of lists in Excel and letters and contracts in Word.”

However you organize your database and run reports the key is to input accurate data. In a large, complex database mistakes have a way of multiplying exponentially.

“If you put it in carefully, you have a volume of data that can help you in many ways,” says Bell.

For more information, visit https://quickbooks.intuit.com/ca/accounting-software/