The role new technology plays for the Jewish summer camp industry.
As Jewish camp leaders once again convened at Leaders Assembly, the Foundation for Jewish Camp’s biennial conference here in New Brunswick, there was a lot of networking taking place – both in person and via social media. The dozens of ad hoc camp reunions taking place in the hallways of the hotel also materialized into an exchange of best practices for these Jewish camp professionals. The hot topic this year was the use of technology, both in the back office of the camp operations and front and center for campers, their parents and alumni.
What role all of this new technology plays for the Jewish summer camp industry was hashed out in breakout sessions at the camp confab in what were termed “Hot Topics” and also discussed in the “Shuk” where the companies that provide this new technology were camped out. “Do you keep your camper registrations and medical forms in the cloud?”, “Who manages your alumni Facebook page?”, “Have you started Instagram or Pinterest accounts,” and “Which online service do you use for staff background checks” were just some of the questions overheard at the conference.
While many don’t typically associate high tech with the camp world, which for generations was thought of as a low tech industry, there’s no question that camps have come to depend on the latest support applications in the technology world to run their camps efficiently, effectively and safely in the 21st century. After all, while one of the core missions of the overnight summer camp experience may continue to be allowing our youth to unplug from their electronic gadgets for several weeks each summer, the camps charged with that mission must be run like businesses. And that means using the best technology to manage everything from security, registration, financials and medical information to social network engagement, summertime communication and alumni relations.
In one “Hot Topic” session, Sacha Litman, the founder of Measuring Success, demonstrated the importance of using “Big Data” to help camps with their year-round engagement efforts. Big corporations, he explained, have been using “Big Data” for many years and summer camps need to utilize the same data tools to acquire new campers and maintain existing relationships with both current staff and the valuable alumni who are now positioned to donate and send their children or grandchildren to the camp. These data measuring tools have been available to camps for years, but most didn’t know how to put that data to good use for philanthropic or camper recruitment and retainment purposes. Litman emplores camps to focus on engaging their campers twelve months a year rather than in the traditional camp recruitment season.
PPC, SEO, back-linking and analytics are terms that traditionally haven’t been tossed around in the offices that run Jewish summer camps. In the new period of the Internet age, however, summer camps have had to shift their marketing focus to include such things as Google AdWords and pay-per-click advertising on such networking sites as LinkedIn and Facebook. Andrew Hazen, a maven in the field of Internet marketing spoke in a skill building workshop at the conference that was billed as a “Fireside Chat with a Digital Marketing Expert.” Camps have only recently been allocating funding toward web marketing and social media, and Hazen was on hand to advise these camps on how to do it in a more cost effective manner. From targeting the camp’s main demographics on Google and optimizing their Facebook posts to blogging regularly for search engine optimization and analyzing the traffic to the registration page of the website, the camp professions in the session were all ears and frantically jotting down notes on these best practices. The days of asking the youngest professional in the camp office to set up a Facebook page or upload some summer highlight photos to the camp’s Instagram account are about over and a more professionalized Internet advertising and social media marketing era is needed for Jewish summer camps.
Summer camp professionals are undoubtedly feeling the stress with all of the technology that now goes into managing the many aspects of running a camp. CampMinder is one of a few full-service companies that have packaged every thinkable component into the software they sell to camps. Paul Berliner, of CampMinder believes that camps should be places that are technology-free zones – aside from the office that is. “Technology can be great if used properly.” He said. “It shouldn’t be a crutch; it should enhance. We’re about building relationships.”
CampMinder, founded in 2001 by former camper and staff member Dan Konigsberg, is the leading web-based camp management and communication system. The team works closely with camp professionals to identify the best practices in camp administration and even publishes an annual print magazine that focuses on the technology camps should be implementing into their management office. Their software is described as more than just a typical database. Their system claims to be intuitive and runs like the proprietary backend software being used by large corporations, which is how Berliner says camps need to be run.
Jeff Bowman, a Toronto native, launched CampBrain, which camps have come to rely on for all of their data, financial information, camper registration and even photo albums and e-mail newsletter communication during the summer. Bowman explained that his software is branded to look like the camp’s website so parents have a seamless registration experience and their first impression of the camp is a positive one.
CampBrain is offered to camps as either a desktop version or as a web-based, cloud managed option. Like CampMinder, all of their forms are customizable for the type of camp and includes a robust alumni management system for historical reporting. What parents appreciate, Bowman said, is that they only need one login and password for everything on the website. CampBrain offers camps credit card processing and complete medical records. Both CampMinder and CampBrain offer what has been described as the one-way window into camp. Parents (and other approved relatives) can get a taste of what the kids are up to each summer by logging into the website and viewing photo albums and reading newsletter updates from the staff.
One area in which camps have adapted very quickly in has been camper and staff medical information. Just as physicians and hospitals have had to break old habits and are now charting with electronic medical records (EMR), camps also have progressed to digital health care data. Dr. Michael Ambrose, founder of CampDoc.com, held court in the Shuk area and carefully explained why camps should use his software. Launched in 2009, Ambrose collaborated with camp doctors, nurses and directors to improve efficiency and maximize safety in local camp communities. CampDoc is growing exponentially each year while also moving into new arenas such as day camps, day care centers and schools. Gone are the days of camps using pencil and paper to keep track of campers’ medications and clinic visits. Today, everything is done the same way a hospital manages its patient data thanks to the embrace of new technology and a willingness to adapt.
The general consensus among camp experts is that technology shouldn’t be seen much by the campers who should unplug and have an electronics-free oasis during their summer experience. However, today’s summer camps must be run efficiently with the most up-to-date technology available.
The evidence shows that Jewish summer camp is a magical experience for thousands of Jewish youth, and the leaders of these camp institutions now recognize that in order to perpetuate their camp’s success they must run them more like businesses. That means exploiting the current technology available and ensuring that each camp’s professional staff has been trained in its use. Embracing the new technology will help camps further their mission and the campers will be the true beneficiaries.
When my ten year old daughter heads to sleep-away camp this summer she will follow a family tradition that began the summer after World War II. Fearing an outbreak of polio in New York City, my grandparents shipped my father off to Massad, a Hebrew-speaking camp in the Poconos. He was only five years old. My grandmother kept the postcards he mailed home. My dad was just learning to print and his penmanship was atrocious. Still, they weren’t difficult to decipher, and all were virtually identical: “I don’t like it here,” his postcards wailed. “Take me home!”
As a former camp counselor I know that dad’s homesickness was hardly anomalous. But by-and-large, his peers who attended Jewish overnight camps have very fond memories of their summers. Dr. Josh Perelman, the deputy Director of Programming and Museum Historian at the National Museum of American Jewish History recently told me that the section of the museum’s permanent exhibit dedicated to summer camping is easily one of the biggest draws. A section of the museum’s website is devoted to Jewish summer camps and guests are invited to upload their own camp photos and share memories.
When I was researching the origins of Jewish culture camping for The Benderly Boys I was struck by the central role that overnight camps played in the Jewish identity formation of my informants. Decades after the closure of Cejwin Camps, the oldest Jewish culture camp, hundreds of alumni remain connected through an online discussion group and social media. A Camp Massad Facebook group has almost 600 participants. Another venerable overnight camp, Modin, which still thrives in Belgrade, Maine, held a 90th anniversary reunion gala at a swanky Manhattan venue with over 500 former campers in attendance. And a reunion of the oldest Yiddish-speaking camp, Boiberik, drew 450 alums and merited an article in the New York Times.
I suppose my father’s memories of camp were not all bad. The summer I turned ten, he and my mom signed me up for a month at Camp Massad. I spent three glorious seasons at Massad Bet and would have returned. But dwindling enrollment compelled the camp to close, in 1979, the same year that the Boiberik campgrounds, in Rhinebeck, New York, was sold to a meditation center. Cejwin, which paved the way for camps like Massad, was shuttered a little over a decade later, in 1991.
Various reasons have been given for these camps’ decline. My guess is that the phenomenon can largely be explained by their failure to keep pace with the rapid socio-economic advancement of the Jewish community. As much as I loved Massad, the truth is that the camp facilities were terribly outdated by the 1970s. I doubt that they were ever in mint condition. But whereas an earlier generation was willing to write off overgrown playing fields, dilapidated communal shower houses and leeches in the lake as symptomatic of the camp’s rugged charms, such blemishes could not be overlooked by middle class kids thoroughly acclimated to the creature comforts of suburbia. Certainly not when there were other well-manicured, flashier alternatives competing for the same clientele.
Moreover, the ideological core of these camps—their devotion to Zionism, Hebrew or Yiddish language and culture—did not tug as deeply at the heartstrings of the third generation. By and large, their parents left their immigrant ideologies in Brownsville and Roxbury when they moved to Great Neck and Newton.
My hypothesis is borne out by the opposing fates of Cejwin and Modin. Established within a few years of one another (1919 and 1922, respectively) and sharing some of the same founders, the former catered to a working class clientele and placed Jewish culture front and center, while the latter attracted the children of professionals and businessmen, enticing them with bourgeois activities like horseback riding and (later) waterskiing. In the 1940s and 50s, Cejwin was teeming with campers and seemed to be in permanent expansion mode. But in the long run, Modin’s formula had greater longevity. The same summer that Cejwin closed, the current owners of Modin relocated their high end camp to a first class facility on the picturesque Belgrade Lakes with a state-of-the-art fitness center and recreation pavilion. The 2011 brochure features panoramic views and happy children of privilege, sailing, windsurfing, white water rafting and wall climbing.
Even Orthodox Judaism had gone bourgeois by the 1970s. In the 1980s I worked at Camp Raleigh, the “sports camp in a Torah environment.” Raleigh boasted private showers in each bunk, a gleaming swimming pool, and a pastry chef who’s creations could rival anything one might find at the nearby Grossinger’s resort hotel. A colleague and fellow member of the Massad Diaspora mockingly referred to Raleigh as “Camp Fress,” from the Yiddish word for pigging out. But camps like Raleigh and Seneca Lake embodied the American Jewish zeitgeist of the late twentieth century, the Age of Fress.
Twenty years later, there is a new trend in Jewish camping: the boutique or niche camp. In 2010, the Foundation for Jewish Camp created a camp incubator that facilitated the launching of five non-profit specialty camps, with names like Adamah Adventures and 92Y Passport NYC. The incubator experiment was so successful that plans for a second incubator are well underway. According to the American Camp Association, the Jewish interest in specialty camps mirrors a larger trend in American camping. Rabbi Eve Rudin, a veteran Reform Jewish camp leader and former Director of the Department of Camp Excellence and Advancement at the Foundation for Jewish Camp is positively bullish on the new specialty camps: “Before specialty camps, young people had to chose between their area of interest and their Jewish interests. Too often, they chose to opt out of the Jewish community in order the gain the skills and mentoring they desired. In these new settings, young people can lead Jewish lives, have Jewish experiences and still receive the sophisticated training and opportunities in their areas of interest.”
Individual Jewish summer camps may come and go and the trappings and programs of these camps may adapt to changing times. But the idea of Jewish camping is as fresh and as full of promise for Jewish identity building and personal growth today as it was when the first Jewish culture camps were founded almost a century ago. My daughter will be attending one of the new specialty camps, Eden Village, a religiously pluralistic camp in Putnam Valley, New York, focusing on Jewish environmentalism and organic farming. Like her counterparts twenty, fifty and ninety years ago, she is breathlessly counting the days until summer.
Rabbi Jason Miller is a contributing writer to My Jewish Learning and Jlife Magazine.
