It often seems that money is one of the biggest issues with sending kids to camp.  We would like to help in that area.  No, we can not scholarship every child that wants to come to camp, but we can give you some ideas to help.

First of all, we feel that proper planning is essential.  No sense in saying you want to come to camp two days before camp starts and not having any money.  So we recommend an annual savings and fund raising plans for the campers in your family, church, or organization.

This can be a great boost to your congregation even if you don't have any kids.  "How can that be?" you may ask.  Once you start planning as a group to send kids, and asking God to bring some kids to you, you'll be surprised by how many children will be brought to your door step.  Kids, grandkids, and neighbors of your members will hear about it and get excited.  If you raise the money but still don't have any kids, just host a spaghetti dinner (or some other community event) at your facility and let them know that you will hold a drawing to give a child a full scholarship to a Summer Camp.

On to the details:

We recommend having 4 different seasons of fund raising.  First you need to know how much money you need to raise.  An easy calculation is to take the cost of camp less the amount the family feels they will be able to save during the year ($10/month would yield $120 towards the family contribution).

Now that you know your goals for the year, you just start raising some money.  Since camp is in June, we recommend the kids plan a couple of carwashes in the Summer months of July and August to get a start on the fundraising.  Then, as you enter into the Fall, the kids can write letters to distant relatives (and call more local ones) asking for $10 donations to help them go to camp the next summer.  We also do a coupon scratch off (www.abcfundraising.com) or discount card (www.fasttrackfundraising.com) promotion at this time of the year that typically generates about $80 per camper.  In the Winter, the youth can sell frozen cookie dough (www.abcfundraising.com) as a fundraising event.  And then in the Spring, we like to have the kids do a scripture reading program where church members sponsors kids for reading and studying scripture for 1/2 hour per day for a month.  Not only does this help the kids raise money, but it also gets their hearts and minds attune to the Spirit of God so that great things can happen at camp.  The kids keep track of what they read each night and what they have learned from their reading on a sheet of paper.  Then they have a parent/guardian sign the sponsor sheet as proof that they read for that day.  After doing this for 4 weeks the campers collect the amount from their sponsors, and turn it in toward their camp tuition.  This program needs at least one adult to oversee the kids, their reading paperwork and their sponsorship collections.

One of the biggest keys to all of this is getting the Camper Application turned in.  It sets the pace and the purpose for the youth.  The earlier the Application gets turned in the better, and the more opportunities for winning some of the scholarship drawings that will provide "free" money to the campers (see details on Application form).  Plus, once you send in the camper application, you can send in money towards those campers and we will credit it towards their account throughout the year.  If you are an organization and don't know exactly who the campers are, you can contact us and we will set up holding spots for campers earmarked for your specific organization.

Please let us know if you have any questions, or if you come up with some other great ideas for helping to raise the money to send kids to camp.  If your group raises an excess amount of money and wants to donate some to the camp ministry, we would greatly appreciate that as well.