The Web continues to make it faster, easier, and cheaper to test out new offerings. Your core business may seem secure for now, and your camp may have valuable assets accrued over time, but it is imperative to examine your mission. Make sure you are offering all the complementary and tangential programs your community needs and wants . . . or someone else might. Utilizing tools available to you on the Web allows you to continuously play defense and offense. Camp Assets The missions of many summer camps are not widely or wildly different from one another; they probably focus on something akin to “delivering the highest quality experiences for children in a safe, nurturing environment.” Frequently, ten months are spent preparing for up to two months of delivering these experiences. Many camps build up assets over time that lead to other major programming beyond summer camp, such as operating schools or community centers. (Yes, the school or community center may operate the camp, but it doesn’t change the equation here.) In those cases, the leadership team may view camp as a summer offering and part of a grander, year-round mission. Camps who view themselves only as summer entities will be vulnerable in a world of proliferating summer choices — and the Web turbo charges this effect. Possible Camp Assets • Brand — Many camps are well known and respected in both their geographic and larger communities. They enjoy a unique status as highly trusted providers of programming to children and community assets. • Property — In many cases, camps’ physical sites have provided a meaningful competitive advantage over time because of zoning, land appreciation, and scarcity. • Community — These are present clients and alumni who you maintain a conversation with through e-mail database, social media, and your Web site. This group has a high degree of engagement and trust (i.e. they don’t automatically delete your e-mail because they have “bought in”). Community can also mean those who live near your facility. At all times, our goal is to grow our community of “bought in” folks who we hope are out in the world evangelizing for us. • People — Adults from your organization with unique experience and skills that are at your disposal to run programs. They are also trusted because you are standing behind them. They may have great talents that you, as principal, need to figure out how to monetize. • Programming expertise — Years of recognized experience delivering wellregarded programs in the community that keep up with parents’ needs. Camp professionals will benef it from continuously examining and inventorying their assets to consider the ongoing relevancy of their mission (i.e., “Am I solely in the summer camp business?”). Here are a few, but by no means all, issues to assess: • What business are we in? What else can we and should we provide to our community that is complementary and supportive of this business? • Are we constantly evaluating a spectrum of business opportunities available to us? • Does our community — online and those living in our immediate geographic area — have unmet needs we can readily ascertain? Are we in a unique position to discern and serve those needs? • What kinds of off-season activities can most easily occur on our property? Are there others with whom we might partner to best provide these? What are the pros and cons of each of these opportunities? • Can we get the right kind of folks onto our property in the off-season who could become summer clients? If so, profitability of off-season programs becomes less paramount. • Is anything we are contemplating at risk to affect our brand negatively because it is too off-target, unrealistic, or a nuisance by diverting attention from our core business? Evaluating Community Needs Our focus now gravitates from understanding the world camps face to changing it. How do we institutionalize ongoing Camp professionals will benefit from continuously examining and inventorying their assets to consider the ongoing relevancy of their mission. evaluation of a suite of business/programming options in the ever-changing context of consumers’ needs and wants? Just because some venture didn’t fly three years ago doesn’t mean its time hasn’t come — perhaps we now possess or have mastered the tools or environment to succeed. Here’s where our Web site deploys easily, cheaply, and quickly. Want to run birthday parties at your facility, or even corporate picnics or retreats? Table 1 shows a set of action steps that could add up to little out-of-pocket expense depending on the choices you make, how ambitious you are, and the time you choose to work this until it proves out (see page 48). What was not included in Table 1: • No hiring of additional employees. • No printing of brochures. • No mass mailing costs — if you mail a newsletter, this can be included at negligible cost.
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