Before we get going here: Free Webinar Alert!!!
The 5 Emails Every Camp Should Send This Fall.
Doug and I will go through what messages we're planning (and have already sent), with the actual versions we're running at K&E and other camps right now. Plus, we'll outline how to write your own.
Details coming Friday. Sign up for the waitlist here.
Ok, let's talk camp facilities
This week I had to cancel three calls because I was out in the middle of camp helping the facilities crew take down lights in our giant tent.
It's this massive thing that houses our stage and all kinds of summer programming. Putting it away is a whole production. This is the last time; updates coming soon.
Thankfully, we have Geof, who absolutely crushes it running our facilities. But when I bought a camp, I still underestimated how much I'd end up thinking about facility stuff. It's basically every second of every day.
I spend less time actually doing facilities stuff than I did building Stomping Ground cabins, but still so much brain space.
Miss those days on speakerphone with my dad while George, Dylan, and I spent hours figuring out what a ridge beam was, or where the pump in the well was, or why poop water was coming up through the drains in the bathhouse.
It matters so, so much. Which every camp person already knows. But I guess I'll use this newsletter as a little camp facility therapy session.
Speaking of running camp, have I mentioned before about our good friends over at
Campminder
My camp does just about everything on Campminder. We've got families signing up for Summer 2027, health forms, staffing, all of it.
If you're running camp, definitely give Campminder a call to see what they can do for you. And tell them Jack Schott (that's me!) sent you.
What Do You Mean, I Have to Run a Facility?
Talking with camp people over the years, the facility is where I’ve watched people get the most intimidated. Especially anyone taking over a camp for the first time.
It can feel like a black hole of scariness, confusion, and not knowing.
A whole property you’re suddenly responsible for. And there is so so much of it. Buildings and other buildings and even more buildings and not to mention all the space in between those buildings.
In the camp world, anyone who knows the difference between a circ saw and a chop saw is basically level 300.
So the thing I’m trying NOT to do is learn how every single little thing works. Nobody can.
The question I’m actually working on is different. When something comes up, can we handle it in-house, or do we need to call somebody?
The $250,000 Pickleball Court
This summer we wanted a pickleball court. Then the quote came back.
A quarter of a million dollars. My heart sank.
But I’ll skip to the end here. We built it for $60,000.
Instead of hiring one company to do the whole thing, we broke it into pieces. We prepped the site ourselves. We brought somebody in for the specialist parts. The paving company came and paved. And then we watched enough YouTube videos to do all the sealant and the painting in-house.
Big ups to Geof for making this possible.
Nobody here knew how to build a pickleball court, start to finish. What we knew was enough to break the job into pieces and tell which pieces were ours. That turned out to be worth $190,000.
In-House or Call Somebody
I can’t tell anyone how to know their whole facility. I can’t even tell you how most of mine works.
But part of knowing your facility is knowing your capacity. What are you capable of? What’s your team capable of? What’s an internal resource, and what actually needs the outside quote?
Now, I know somebody out there is going, "Must be nice, Jack, a $60,000 decision." Totally fair. But this scales all the way down.
We put handwashing and bottle-filling stations all over camp this summer because we needed them. Total cost, a few hundred bucks.
That was real work for the team who did it. But it was work we knew we could handle in-house, and once we knew that, it was go time.
It’s not always like that. The furnace and the hot water heater and the rest of the gut-punch stuff don’t care about your mindset. But a lot of decisions leave you a choice, and that’s where this helps.
And it’s how I’m trying to tackle the most intimidating part of camp. Besides getting new kids to camp, which is also very intimidating. Which is to say, working at a camp is intimidating for all kinds of reasons.
The tent is down, by the way. Gone for good. Question going forward is what parts of the new building will be done in house or with contractors? Time vs money. And trying not to get overwhelmed.
You got this,
Jack
PS - Love camp? Same here. That's why we're writing 3x a week at Write From Camp on Substack.
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