Movement Leaders on Camp Director Role, Rising Costs, and Endowments

We sincerely thank the camp leaders who shared their time, candor, and insights.
 

Use these links to find each conversation in the interview below:

• What are potential solutions to the ever-increasing demands on the camp director role? For example, have you considered adding an executive director and/or having two co-directors?
• With rising costs, how can camps balance sustainability and affordability?
• What role can endowments play in addressing the sustainability-affordability challenge?
• Finding Hope Among Our Challenges

What are potential solutions to the ever-increasing demands on the camp director role? For example, have you considered adding an executive director and/or having two co-directors?

Ruben Arquilevich: My bias is for each camp to identify its top leader, then let that person identify their needs. I have not seen one best model or panacea. But I do believe in finding the best leader one can, then letting that person help identify what kind of model or partners they need to address this new era of work.

Helene Drobenare: I also don’t think there is one model. A problem with the executive-director model is that many camps are too small to sustain it. A camp that has only 250 kids, for example, is not enough to support an executive director.

Alan Silverman: I agree, there is no panacea and that any solution needs to be tailored to each camp. Over the years, I’ve seen that nonprofits often do not take care of their key people as much as they should. And key people in nonprofits don’t always recognize what they need and when they need it. We’ve fallen down in that area. We need to be thinking of what we can offer camp directors. For example, it could be pensions, funding time off, or something nonmonetary.

Jenny Isaacs: Our camp director role has evolved significantly over the last five, six years. For most of our history, there was one adult, a Shaliach, who would change every three years, was operating in a second language outside their cultural context, and running a summer camp, which was a foreign concept to them. And we would lose our organizational memory frequently to turnover. We used to have an office manager, who really was our institutional memory. When I think about turnover, a key question is, “Where do you actually need staff retention?” Is it most important that the executive director or the camp director be that long-term person, or is a different staff member the one you need to keep long term? That’s part of the creative thinking that we can do.

I would love it if the camp and executive-director jobs could be split, as they are two different jobs. Camp directors are dealing with so much day-to-day, it’s hard to address the executive issues. And we have a big backlog of those types of issues. We now have a team of three, and we recently changed everyone’s job title so that we’re all director-level positions. It’s not that our jobs changed significantly, but it created a director’s team that we didn’t have before, and that has been helpful for team spirit.

Dr. Daniel Olson: In the Ramah camping movement, we are lucky that the senior directors of the different camps are well supported by robust leadership teams. Most camps have senior directors of development. We also have senior directors of finance and operations and a great cohort of associate and assistant directors right now. But still, the director job takes a toll, so we are developing different models. There is a Ramah camp that has co-directors with no executive director. Another has a CEO, two senior level directors, and an assistant director or director of camper care. Still other camps have an executive director who oversees the organization as a whole, including its year-round operations, and a director of the day-to-day summer operations.

Sharon Waimberg: The system with which I work has six independent, very small camps. Several of our camps recently had changeovers in their professional leadership. All of our camps have hired additional staff. It wasn’t very long ago that most were run by one person, year-round. Adding a second person was a really big deal. Some of them now have three. Two of our camps divided the responsibilities of their executive director position into two distinct year-round director positions.

Harrell Wittenstein: We’ve all talked about how the camp director profession has more responsibilities, expectations, and turnover. There are not a lot of easy or great solutions. I do know we’ve got to flatten the responsibilities across more people. I don’t love the co-director model but, in fact, we have a camp in our group that is making it work, so that is definitely a possibility. But then you go back to affordability. How do you pay two well-compensated positions?

David Phillips: Interestingly, if you look at private, YMCA, 4-H, or Girl Scout camps, they really have no better solution. The real time-sap is parents, staff, and community, with the resulting challenge of customer-service expectation, which doesn’t necessarily impact the executive-level function.

I’m not a great lover of co-director solutions. Any time I have witnessed co-directors, it has been a struggle operationally and a challenge from a leadership and culture perspective. Camp, in essence, is a benevolent dictatorship whether we like it or not, and it is at its safest when there is one person who is perceived as in charge. And whether that’s an executive director who oversees a camp director who oversees assistant directors or another arrangement, I think a linear pyramid is needed. I believe this is why our camps have operated in a fundamentally safe way for generations. At the same time, I do see the need to reevaluate the staffing dynamic at the year-round level – these are lifestyle jobs that take a toll. We continually have to evaluate the business model to see what works best and what encourages strong, stable and impactful experiences for all parties (including the year-round talent).

Jennifer Mamlet: One area of ever-increasing demand is around fundraising. But people who go into camping do so because they love camp, not because they want to fundraise. I would love to see a deeper investment in helping camps fund multiple years of dedicated development professionals’ employment. The director will always have a role to play, but this will help reduce pressure on the role.

We also need to invest in the talent pipeline, and provide cohort learning for rising leaders so that by the time somebody gets to the director level, they’ve already been trained and given tools, resources, and - more than that - a network to continue supporting their work and growth.

Jenny Isaacs: Camp people are really good at doing a lot with very little, and that’s a blessing, but it’s also a curse, because we’ll just keep doing it until we can’t, until we drop. I do think there’s some thinking to be done about how we can collectively come together with the field and parents about what is realistic to expect from camps and staff. I feel like there is strength in numbers. Perhaps we could have an annual North American–wide camp-office closure for a week, something just to normalize that people need a break.

Dr. Daniel Olson: We’re still very concerned about burnout in these jobs. We are always thinking about what we can do to make sure that senior level directors are getting the support they need to stay in the field so they can build relationships that last from a person’s camper years to staff years to alumni years to possibly even camp parent years. Board presidents and lay leadership are also part of the formula to help support executive leadership.

Alan Silverman: Certainly, we need to provide support, especially in emergency times. In Israel right now, they call it the ketat ko’nenut: when there’s an emergency, they’re there to protect. Maybe when a camp director is struggling, there is some kind of mentorship even across movements, or some kind of just, “Hey, I’m there, I’m with you.”

With rising costs, how can camps balance sustainability and affordability?

Ruben Arquilevich: As Helene brought up [in the first interview article], there is a disconnect when a camp can inspire its lay leaders, donors, and community to put up a multimillion-dollar facility but needs an extra half-million dollars a year for scholarships. If it also can raise those scholarship funds, it makes the affordability work better. What really rises to the top for me is this: How can we make the argument to our professionals, lay leaders, and philanthropic community that affordability and sustainability should match capital expansion and excitement?

I’m seeing camps that are 50, 60, 70 years old that need to replace a cabin or dining hall. With construction costs going up 3-4 percent more than inflation and with added insurance and maintenance costs, there is significant financial impact. We need a conversation among lay and professional leaders around these core needs and sustainability. My sense is that we just haven’t really gone there, and that speaks to the need to have strong business planning.

Alan Silverman: I agree that our primary goal is to help people afford to send their kids to camp or day school, whatever it might be. Getting your name on a building should be secondary. But it’s hard when someone comes and says, “I’m going to give you five million dollars, but you need to use it to build a new dining hall. And I want to name it after my grandmother.” It’s hard to say, “No, we don’t want your money.” We will need a major philosophical change in our own and the broader community to make this happen.

Sharon Waimberg: There’s a real fear that we will be squeezing out families, so we need to raise scholarship money. However, when I spoke with some of our directors, I found that their donor base has stayed the same. Many of the donors who gave us $100 a decade ago are still sending $100.

We need to figure out where more dollars are going to come from so that camp costs don’t get completely out of reach for families. I agree that the community has to decide to prioritize Jewish camping.

Harrell Wittenstein: It used to be that you looked at scholarship families and if they made $100,000, you’d give them some kind of support. Now, if they make $200,000, you are going to give them support. Prices are going up, and families are getting squeezed. I think families are going to start choosing between synagogue, day school, and camp and stick with one, whichever they feel is the best return on investment. We need a collective communal look at Jewish camping if we want to continue to be one of the legs of the three-legged stool: Israel, day school, and Jewish camp.

Jenny Isaacs: We just piloted a sliding-scale tuition model this year. We also are looking at reducing the amount of work it takes to process applications because that’s a full-time job in and of itself.

We don’t want a situation where parents are choosing camp over other Jewish options, because we believe in them, too. The system and the community shouldn’t force us to compete with each other, but eventually that’s what will happen unless there’s some counterforce.

David Phillips: The affordability issue is in fact a problem of the Jewish community. We need to take this proven community-building program (perhaps the most impactful one we have) and apply its value-driven narrative to the broader community, because the more we keep it limited to the camp world, Federations and other organizations will raise dollars off our backs, but not necessarily invest in the same proportion as its ROI. For example, funding entities talk about how fabulous and important their scholarship awards are and how committed they are to Jewish camping, but the fact is, they could and should contribute more because the data supports its value. And for individual stand-alone camps, can they afford to stay in business when they don’t have that natural support system? We’re also going to need more regional collaboration for infrastructure. We should be looking at regional staffing for human resource and facility operations.

My concern is that if you squeeze everything out, you’re operating on a shoestring, and that’s just not how this industry can be successful. Because we’re the field of dreamers and doers, it’s more essential than ever before that we are robust. Camp is the hothouse for generating future community lay and professional leadership. My gut says we will need a bold and audacious campaign that secures the future of Jewish camp for generations to come.

Jenny Isaacs: For us, it is helpful to be working with secular Jews. Their cost of Jewish living is primarily camp.

Jennifer Mamlet: If anybody figures out the balance between sustainability and affordability, that will be the magic. But I think the answers are going to lie with fundraising.

Dr. Daniel Olson: The cost of camp is going up. The overall cost of Jewish life is going up. I heard from one of our directors that when families ask for scholarships, camp says, please talk to your synagogue or local Federation first. And, increasingly, the synagogue or local Federation says to the family, please talk to your camp first. So where’s the right place to go for scholarship money? We may need a new way. And we are going to have to fundraise even more to make up that difference.

Harrell Wittenstein: If you don’t have a solid, stable fundraising program, you’re in deep, deep doody—that’s a technical term. Down the road, I think it’s going to be three to five years before it gets really difficult, and probably five to 10 years before we see camps go out of business.

What role can endowments play in addressing the sustainability-affordability challenge?

Helene Drobenare: Even a 400-kid camp is at risk of getting into financial trouble, maybe not today, but in five years. Endowments are the way to go. Even if a camp starts small with $50,000, it needs to get it into a fund that will make money.

The problem is having staff stay around long enough. A director who is going to stay only three to five years is focused on covering next year’s costs. They don’t understand that in five or ten years, you’ll need an endowment to support your scholarship fund or provide funding when the roof falls in. If you don’t have a seasoned camp director who can see past the next day, when you say the word endowment, you are talking to a deer in the headlights.

Ruben Arquilevich: I agree. Endowment giving requires a 10-, 15-, 20-year vision. If we can just get the field to shift over to that mindset, that would affect everything that we’re talking about. There’s a great line about “When’s the best time to plant a tree? Twenty years ago. When’s the second-best time to plant a tree? Today.”  Same kind of idea.

Alan Silverman: We’re starting the endowment-building process. It is very important to get to a point where the interest will be enough to cover major emergencies. I think that will be far in the future unless we find a few funders who will give significant funds to make that happen.

Sharon Waimberg: We run small camps with efficient budgets. However, they need to grow to be sustainable. An endowment might be the answer. But our camps are saying, “We would love to do that. It makes a lot of sense. But we’re trying to raise money for scholarship right now, and we don’t have a development director.” So it lands on the executive director, along with everything else they have to do.

Harrell Wittenstein: Only a handful of independent camps have a professional development person. So the concept that you’re going to raise money for all of the needs of scholarship, capital, and operations, along with legacy and endowment, is just folly until we get to a place where all of our camps have development staff. In the meantime, are you raising money for operations because next year you have to balance your budget? Are you raising for scholarship because you have a lot of people who are asking for funds? Or do you raise for capital because your buildings are falling down? Pick one.

David Phillips: I agree. We need to encourage our camps as they raise dollars for new buildings and programs. Donors need to feel confident that their investments will withstand the test of time and that deferred maintenance will keep them usable and something they can be proud to have their name associated. If we say, “We are going to allocate twenty cents of every dollar raised and put it into an endowment to support the beauty of your investment,” it’s a strong stewardship message.

And, by the way, there are many boards that are still soft on their own legacy giving. We need to tighten up on what it takes to be a board member. I tell my clients (and anyone who will listen) that every board member should agree in advance of being nominated that they will have a conversation about legacy giving during the second year of their term. Every board member can send a strong message by making a legacy commitment and it will move the needle in terms of stability and the narrative to other potential donors.

Jennifer Mamlet: I think it’s about blended campaigns and bringing donors along. If somebody comes with a $5 million gift for a capital campaign, we want, with the donor’s permission, to take a percentage of that gift and put it into an endowment.

We need to educate our camps about other models and industries where endowments generate an annual spin-off that can support operations or more affordable tuition. We just have to rip off the band-aid and accept that we can no longer put annual fundraising, endowment fundraising, and capital fundraising in three different buckets or in three different people’s hands. They actually all belong to the same fundraising approach.

Dr. Daniel Olson: The ideal approach to development is a “yes/and” model. Yes, give to the capital campaign. Yes, give to the scholarship fund, and, yes, give to endowment and legacy, too. We’re lucky to have some people who are able to do all of those things for different Ramah camps out there. But there will be times when priorities have to be made about where to spend limited funds. We are very lucky in the Ramah world to have many of these pieces in place already, including endowments at most of the camps.

 

Finding Hope Among Our Challenges

Jennifer Mamlet: In an increasingly complex world, camp is the best example of back to basics that we have, so we’ve just got to continue to do everything we can to make it stronger and get more people to camp. The world will be better.

Alan Silverman: I’ll add that in this year in particular, children and staff really, really need camp. The safe environment and being and celebrating together with other Jewish young adults and children is more and more important.

And I would love to see young professionals have a training program where they can spend time at other camps, including ones of different movements, and learn, grow, and develop.

Ruben Arquilevich: I am just grateful to have this conversation with all of you. Amidst all the challenges and disruptions of the last number of years, and all the scary, dark things we have, there’s also so many incredibly bright, beautiful, miraculous moments that are happening right now at this moment. It’s important to have that mindset of choosing abundance for ourselves because that helps set the tone for all others around us.

Jenny Isaacs: We have discussed some pretty significant and depressing challenges. But I do want to emphasize what is stated in one of our camp songs: “We may not be the biggest camp, but we’ve got a lot of heart.” I feel like this is true of the whole camping field. There are a lot of forces that are making camp really hard right now. But the Jewish camping field has a lot of heart. 

Sharon Waimberg: Well, following up, Jenny, on what you’re saying, yes, we have a lot of challenges, and yes, things are changing, but kids are still kids, and camp is still magic. We just have to figure out how we’re going to continue to operate our camps and help our youth leadership move out into the world and continue to make a difference. So while it’s challenging, I think that people in this field are up for the challenge, as long as we can keep everyone feeling positive about it.

I do appreciate the comfort and opportunity to realize that the things with which our camps struggle, that keep us up at night, are being dealt with throughout the Jewish camping world.

Harrell Wittenstein: Sharon, you just summed up why the AIJC was developed 12 years ago, because the challenges operationally are the same. Everybody does it a little bit differently. but ultimately we’re very similar.

Maybe operationally, some camps are not up to where they need to be. Some contraction of the industry may be all right. I hate to see a significant contraction because of financial and professional reasons, because I think there are solutions. I’ll be the glass half full. There are solutions to this. We have to come together collectively.

David Phillips: The beauty of the camp sector is that we actually have real measurable impact, and the field is full of smart, capable, and talented people with strong work ethics and drive. We need to leverage all these elements and aggressively fight to ensure we can continue to provide these services that are so desperately needed. The threats of sustainability, talent acquisition, and retention and the need for volunteer leadership to really understand the changing nature of the sector are real. But we can and will overcome them – there is no choice if we want vibrant and vital Jewish communities!

Dr. Daniel Olson: Jewish camp offers some of the best tools that we have to create community, to create fun, to create personal growth, to create a set of commitments towards a certain way of being in the world that’s good. And there’s a long history of doing this really, really well. So I hope that all the challenges that we have surfaced in this conversation are not big that they prevent people from continuing to be motivated by all the good we do.
Did you miss the first article featuring these field leaders and movement heads? You can find the first installment here.