Tag: summer camp management software

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5 Online Tools Every Camp Director Should Know About

Posted on by Michelle Panelo

Without a doubt, we are living in a digital age. With that, many organizations and businesses are taking advantage of online tools to manage work, increase collaboration, and maximize their time. Summer camps are no exception. While summer months are spent with your campers, we know that the rest of the year is spent gearing up for the upcoming season. 

Having easy to use online tools makes those days spent organizing camp projects more productive and not only that, even fun – and who doesn’t want that? 

Below, we’ve compiled a list of a few of our favorite online tools (broken down by need!):

Project Management/Productivity

Trello

Trello is one of many online project management tools out there. Project management tools like Trello help boost productivity by making completing tasks a lot more manageable. Described as being easy to use and highly-visual, Trello has won the approval of many professionals (including us here at CampSite!).

Trello can help you manage to-do lists along with stay updated on assignments you may have handed off to your camp staff. Colorful cards and boards make the platform visually appealing for those who like a lively workspace!  It’s especially great during the off-season as you prepare for your upcoming summer camp season!

Organization

Dropbox

Gone are the days of filing cabinets overflowing with paper documents and what-have-yous. Dropbox is an online tool that makes not only storing camp documents but searching for them super simple. For your camp, this could include anything from CIT training handbooks to summer camp brochures!

One of the major benefits of Dropbox is how convenient it is. You can access all your files through any mobile device, wherever you are. This makes it easy to share camp documents with the rest of your team!

Communication/Collaboration

Slack

For many of us, 2020 has brought in numerous challenges. This includes shifting to a more remote work setting. Because of this, many of us have had to get accustomed to communicating with our team virtually. Slack is one of several online collaboration tools that help make this transition smoother. Online tools like Slack also provide year-round benefits for summer camps who may need to connect with staff who may only work on-site during the summer.

Using Slack, you can connect with individual staff members through direct chats and even with multiple staff members at the same time. Chat rooms or ‘channels’ in Slack make it easy to organize conversations by topic or departments at your organization. Another benefit of online collaboration tools like Slack is the ability to quickly share files with your staff – plus Slack also integrates with Dropbox!

Marketing

Canva

Canva is an online design tool that is great for summer camps! Whether you are interested in adding flair to your existing marketing material for next season or just need a little inspiration, Canva pretty much has you covered. 

Canva is a trusted place for design beginners and professionals to create high-quality marketing materials.  It can help you elevate your social media posts and outreach content. By offering design templates, Canva is especially helpful if you regularly send newsletters to your families!  Design tools like Canva will help keep families engaged all year round!

Google Analytics

If you consider yourself a little on the tech-savvy side,  Google Analytics is worth checking out! Google Analytics is an online web analytics tool that will take your camp marketing to a whole new level. 

In a nutshell, Google Analytics helps you track and analyze traffic that runs through your website. Not only how much traffic but the type of traffic and where traffic is coming from. With online tools like Google Analytics, you can identify trends and improve your camp marketing strategies!

We like Google Analytics so much that CampSite offers a feature that integrates Google Analytics tracking codes directly into selected CampSite public-facing pages! This provides our camps with the ability to collect data on families who have expressed interest through CampSite or have even gone as far as starting the enrollment process!

Whether you are interested in maximizing productivity, or simply just need a little marketing boost for your camp website, there is something out there for you to explore.

These are just a few online tools that have changed the game for professionals across all industries including summer camps. Living in this digital age has its perks – including having a myriad of online tool options that not only help make our work days shorter but even more enjoyable!  

Is your camp running on CampSite?  Request a free, personalized demo  to explore our comprehensive camp management software today!

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4 Ways Day Camps Can Build Camper Groups With Our Bunking Board

Posted on by Michelle Panelo
Camper group sitting on a field

It’s that time of the year where you must make the final touches to your summer camp planning. With so much uncertainty in the air this year, it’s difficult to know exactly what needs to be done. But as summer quickly approaches, there is light visible at the end of the tunnel as states issue green lights to summer camps with the agreement that they follow all issued safety guidelines – including maximum camper group sizes.

For camps running this year, a huge aspect of their planning will involve building a solid camper group structure that adheres to these guidelines and the goals for their camps.

There are many benefits to assigning campers to groups. Not only do you and your team reap the logistical benefits, but your campers benefit from group settings as well! By assigning your campers to different groups, it encourages friendships and helps foster a sense of belonging. 

If you run an overnight night, those camper groups consist of cabin and bunking assignments. While if you run a day camp, it may entail creating camper groups for your day-to-day activities. 

No matter how you group your campers, we can all agree that having the right tools can revolutionize how this process is done. The best camp grouping tools should be flexible and include easy to use features. In CampSite, we offer a camp grouping tool (‘Bunking boards’) that offers just that. 

While designed with the overnight camp in mind, you don’t have to be an overnight camp to benefit from this tool. So we’ve compiled a list of the top 4 different camper groups non-overnight camps can easily build through our grouping tool. 

1. Age Groups

This ranks high on the list of common camper groups. This type of grouping structure is popular among both overnight and non-overnight camps. As a result, campers are able to socialize with other campers their own age. Age groups are also a great option if you must tailor activities to the different development needs of each age group!

2. Grade-Level Groups

Like age groups, grade levels also place high in the ranks of common camper groups. Campers will be able to interact with not only campers of the same age, but also with campers in the same grade. With campers grouped by grade, you can easily incorporate grade-appropriate activities for each group too!

3. Classrooms

If you run educational programs that involve getting kids into a classroom, this is a great option. Using our grouping tool, you would be able to easily organize and place campers in the right classroom environment.

4. Teams

You don’t have to be a sports specific camp to utilize this type of grouping structure! If you have your campers participate in sports-related activities, having this already prepared can save you and your staff a great deal of time. As a result, allowing more time spent with your campers.

The End Objective is Always the Same

We understand that each camp has their own preferred method for grouping campers. Hopefully this post will provide a little inspiration as you determine the best way to organize campers for the coming season! At the end of the day, the objective is always the same – making sure campers get the most out of their summer camp experience.

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The Best Camp Software: 4 Parent-Friendly Features

Posted on by campmanagement
4 Hit Features of Parent-Friendly Camp Software photo

For camp software to be at its best, it needs to appeal not only to camp directors and stuff, but it must also be parent-friendly. This doesn’t just mean that it should just look nice but that its functions go beyond satisfying the basics of parent expectations.

Parents are the customers your camp business must appeal to first. Which is why parent-friendly camp software is a big deal. So, what is parent-friendly summer camp software? It’s software with easy-to-use features that parents want to engage with—and if your current summer camp software lacks them—it may be time to consider other options. Here’s an idea on what to look for when it comes to parent-friendly summer camp software.

1: A Clean Parent Dashboard

You want enrollment that makes it easier for parents, year-after-year. To ensure that, the display of the Parent Dashboard should be simple-to-use and pleasant to look at. This way, parents can get to their financial pages, print out receipts and add in their payment information without additional help from your staff.

Remember that ease of use doesn’t just benefit your camper parents. It benefits your staff too. The time that your staff saves by not having to help guide a parent can now go toward anything pending on the camp agenda. With parent-friendly summer camp software, you are continuously satisfying both parties.

“The ease of which you can re-enroll, log onto the parent dashboard, fill out all their forms in one location. And frankly parents have said, this is the most efficient and easiest way for them to go about doing what they need to do.”-Brian Cohen Associate Director, Iroquois Spring

2: Advanced Email Tracking

How a software communicates is everything. Understanding the success of these communication lines is a big part of that everything. But, how do you measure successful email communication without the ability to sufficiently track it? You deserve to know what happens to the emails sent out to your camper parents. Parent-friendly camp software, like CampSite, takes care of that with Email Tracking.

Was the email opened? How many views did it get? Email Analytics tools take care of that. They allow your staff to ensure that no stone is left unturned. In Campsite’s summer camp software, camp staff can track the success of any email campaign by analyzing ‘click-through rates’ from your families.

“With the different features at CampSite we can specialize all kinds of marketing tools for our families, it’s really helped us move our enrollment earlier and faster and grow our business.”-Michele Rowcliffe Executive Director, YMCA Camp Cory

3: An Interactive Photo & Video Blog

A private blog is a wonderful resource to share photos and videos with your camper parents. Let’s say you have one integrated with your software. Two weeks of summer camp have gone. Your blog is now full of photos of your campers. Nearly hundreds of them. Do you want these parents to sift through them all to find their child? No. They want something that can direct them to the photos they want to see—in a snap. They want parent-friendly camp software with an interactive blog that includes Facial Recognition. If your software doesn’t have this function, it could be time for a change.

So, what is Facial Recognition? It’s a feature that connects both parents and campers in a highly convenient manner. Intuitive summer camp software, like CampSite, will run Facial Recognition for added parent and staff ease-of-use and it works like this. It cuts down on the laborious process of looking through every single picture and instantly brings the photos of camper children directly to a parent. It’s the simple power of convenience that well defines a parent-friendly camp software.

4: A Texting Feature Between Parents & Your Camp

Of course, there’s more to keeping in touch with parents than through a blog. A photo and video blog – while awesome for camp parents – cannot effectively communicate in an individual and private manner. For instance, what if a camper fell and scraped their elbow at day camp? Or if a camper cried on their first night at sleepaway camp? These situations aren’t meant for a blog post that all camper parents can see. A private messaging system is much more suitable.

When you think about it, a private text messaging module that integrates with your camp software is parent-friendly by concept alone – it is an instant source of contact between camper parents and your camp staff. If you are using a text messaging system with your software, it should satisfy these functions.

  • Send one text or a hundred as simple as sending an email.
  • Archived correspondence for easy access through family accounts
  • All correspondence collected in one place, making sure you don’t miss any new replies.
  • A personalized phone number in your local area code – making it easy for parents and staff to get in touch!

Parent-friendly camp management software, like CampSite, can be your solution to running your summer camp just the way parents want it. With it, staying in touch with your camper parents becomes less tedious and more seamless towards nurturing a better parent-to-camp relationship. CampSite has a friendly easy-to-learn layout with happy, helpful staff to guide you along the way.

 

For more of CampSites favorite new tech features, check out this 4-min read.

Want to learn more about CampSite camp software? Click the button below!

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The Best Tech In Camp Management Software

Posted on by campmanagement
Best tech for camp management photo

Thinking about technology operating alongside summer or day camps can create a complex image. Phones, computers, and other gadgets can be viewed as obstacles at camp, posing more  as a distraction from enjoying camp activities than a benefit. Whatever your view on the relationship between tech and campers, the productivity benefits of camp software are undeniable. Technology has become such an integral part of running a camp, from cell phones, to action cameras to camp software itself! So we decided to rank  our favorites for the top must have tech features in camp software!

A Cloud Service:

Chances are you’ve heard this term thrown around in the tech world or even at your camp. A “cloud service” allows instant access to vast amounts of data from anywhere—without worrying about storing photos, files, and forms yourself. This means if you fill out a form while enabling a cloud service, “the cloud” stores that form away where it can be updated or accessed in seamless fashion. Camper photos, camper medical forms, staff resumes and more. It’s all readily available to you.

Are cloud services popular? Sure! In fact, the world’s largest cloud platform, Amazon Cloud hosts some of the web’s most popular services – Netflix, Pinterest, and of course, Amazon.com – to name just a few. In addition, we use Amazon Cloud to host CampSite!

Facial Recognition Technology:

This awesome feature lets parents locate their children in camp photos instantly, saving all the trouble of looking through albums of camp pictures from their camp counselor. The Facial Recognition is one of the most innovative features to connect both parents and campers in a fast and convenient manner.

You may have not even noticed the power of facial recognition tech at work. It’s on social media when you upload a photo of your friends and you’re asked to confirm the names attributed to the people in the photo. This means the next time a photo is uploaded with the same people, the program recognizes them with better
accuracy and your photos are easier to find of people you’re looking for. This feature is a dream come true for many parents since it saves them time and energy. The alternative is a mild dread when considering how to keep track of handfuls of
camp photos.

Text Messaging:

Most messaging services also let you archive conversations and set notifications, while others allow so much more. Because text messaging is a near essential in our everyday lives, staff that use texting as part of their camp management strategy are being able to send mass messages to all camper families about crucial information, from event changes, updates and emergencies. Messages instantly land on the appropriate parent’s phone inbox for quick and easy viewing. So how does text messaging impact the relationships between parents and staff? For one, it becomes faster. Similarly, it makes communication over smaller issues much simpler than email or phone. For example, a text message to a campers parent that their swimming goggles broke and to send a new pair, saves the time of making the call or going back and forth on an email thread.

Rollover Data:

Contact information, session dates, forms, notes, tuition plans, forms, more forms… we could go on about the enrollment and registration process! We understand how it can take the entire day away from you. With a feature like CampSite’s rollover tech, we automatically populate registration forms and fields based on previous entries. This camp management software fan-favored feature makes the process hardly a process at all. Not when it’s much faster and more efficient than before!

Our rollover data feature includes nearly every fillable form or field we offer. From parent’s contact information, notes, enrollment options, session dates, tuition plans, to discounts and forms, it’s all retained and open for editing at any time. Make sure your camp management software asks what you want to roll over to the next year!

Camp Management Software:

How could we not have camp management software on the list? It’s what CampSite is all about! A camp software CRM is the biggest tech powerhouse in the camp industry. Why? Because cloud-based, robust software serves as an all-in-one answer to your camp management needs. You can operate all of the features listed above and more easily and efficiently. So go ahead and give camp management software a try! With CampSite, you can send a massive “Welcome!” text to all your campers, launch facial recognition for all camper parents to easily locate their children in photos, re-enroll campers for future camp adventures, and so much more!

Want to learn more about CampSite? Click the button below!