Analysis Of The Main Departments And Organizational Structure Of Camp Pinewood
Camp Pinewood has been a camp since 1945. It is a non-denominational Christian camp and was originally associated and made up of eleven churches around Idaho. Those eleven churches each have three representatives that make up the board. Due to being very large and having a hard time getting thirty-three people to agree, camp made an Executive Board which is made up of four pastors and four lay people, people that attend the churches. That Executive Board chooses the Executive Director, who is the person physically at camp and runs it. The Executive Board and the Director come up with the mission statement for camp.
Camp Pinewood's mission is to “Glorify God by partnering with churches in making Biblical disciples of Jesus Christ through the camp experience. ” Every part of the camp links back to this, which makes it the most important thing. As the Executive Board is in charge of the Executive Director, the Director is in charge of the four overarching departments. The First Department is Administration, which is run by Lauren Daniels, the camp directors wife. On my day of following Lauren around, I learned that she considers Administration as Guest Services. You have to juggle guests and make sure that they have everything they need. She said that you should provide support for everyone and keep them happy. Other than keeping guests satisfied a part of guest services is knowing what guest will be there. Registration is how camp knows what campers are coming up, who has paid, or who is on a scholarship. Registrations are now done online through a free system called cognito forms. When registrations come in Lauren has a spreadsheet for each camp which she fills in their name, age, gender, and other vital information. Whenever or if she needs to know something about a camper she can just look at the spreadsheet and know who to call or what to do. If and when there are paper registrations they are filed in binders for their respective camps in alphabetical order.
Another large part of Administration is finances. At the beginning of every new camp year, the executive board gets together with the director and plans out how much they think it will cost to run the camp each year. This years budget was $250, 000. They use that budget and the other cost of things to figure out how much to charge for camp. Lauren told me that they figure that it is $30 to $35 per person per day and around $2 per meal, per person, per day. So the raw cost without meals for Junior camp is $150 and with meals is $172. What they charge for Junior camp though is $200 for early bird price and $220 normally. They raise the cost from the raw cost so they can pay the bills and not exceed the budget. This is the first part of financing camp the other part is the camp’s improvement budget. The money in the improvement budget is used for improving or building things around camp. One thing that camp just improved was the Office, they turned Joshua’s Retreat, what used to be another place to sleep and for counselors to hangout and took half of it and turned it into an office. They also got canvas tents to put down by the river for Adventure camp and all of the money for these things came out of the improvement budget.
The second overarching department is facilities. The facilities department is run By Jake Jacobs. In this department, there is house maintenance, which is where Jake makes sure that everything around camp is running and working. With Facilities Jake is the person that fixes whatever breaks down. Jake is also the person that heads all the improvements around camp. So when Camp has work weekends, he is the person that heads all of the projects. In facilities, there are also grounds work. So Jake makes sure that the lawn is alive and the facility looks good. The third department is food, which for the past five years is run by Gail Smith and Lauren. This department works with Administration and the budget when ordering food and figuring out how much it costs. Gail deals with all the food preparation and cooking. Food is vital for weeks of camp.
The last and largest overarching department is Program. In the program category there is the activities, the counselors, the campers, etc. The person who runs the Program part of camp works closely with Bill and is basically his right hand man. Program is the most important department for it deals with campers and staff. This is where it is decided how each camp is going to be different and not a repeat of the year before and of the other camps. One way that they do this is changing the games. For instance for junior camp they played a Finding Dory night game, for Jr. High an Incredibles night game, and for High School an Avengers Infinity War night game. If they do similar games for the camps, like four way water kickball, then they change the difficulty level of the game depending on the camp. Another way that they make it different is by changing the speaker for each camp. During chapel time a speaker goes and give a lesson based off of what the theme of that camp is. For each camp the speaker is different and is either a missionary or pastor. They try to keep the camps different and fun so then kids want to come back the next year. Campers are a very important part to camp, without them camps would be out of business. Campers for Pinewood are extremely vital for youth camps, for these are the main camps. For the past couple years the amount of campers for each youth camp has doubled. Most of the campers are from the sister churches, but a large amount of them now come from an organization called Angel Tree. Angel Tree kids are the kids whose parents are in prison, the organization pays the fee to send a large amount of these kids to camp. There is actually a lot of thought that goes into deciding where to place the campers. Sometimes parents, or campers, will make requests to be in a certain cabin or with certain people. That request will be honored if applicable; sometimes certain people shouldn’t be together or that cabin is just too full. With cabins, you just try to figure out where kids fit and attempt to keep the cabin at eight campers. Another thing with cabins and placement is keeping churches together that way the kids are already with their friends and there won’t be too much movement. With the angel tree kids, they just put them where there is space. When placing the cabins they also consider the counselors and the strengths and weaknesses they have. For instance, I got a cabin of five very difficult, sassy, boy crazy girls and I also have five sisters. Due to knowing my personality and that I won’t let strong personalities walk all over me they gave me a cabin of strong-willed girls.
Aside from campers, the next most vital things are counselors. The role of a camp counselor as described by the CCUSA, Camp Counselors USA is, “As a leader, role model and moral compass to campers ages 7 - 16, your primary responsibility is overall supervision. You will ensure campers’ well-being and make their camp experience as fun and rewarding as possible”. Counselors are the people that do all of the hands-on work with the kids, the director may own and run the camp, but the counselors are the ones to actually impact the kids. The counselors are the glue, they dedicate their summer to these campers and spend day in and day out with them. They in a sense are the camp; being a counselor is no easy task though. In fact, it is quite exhausting, yet people come back to do it the next year. Nicole Healy, a two-time counselor at Camp Pinewood, in fact, said that the weeks leave her drained and yet when it is over she is all over the next year. What brings her back though isn't the pay or the camp itself, but rather the experiences and campers. Although yes Camp is for the campers it affects more than just them. It is a growing experience for everyone.
To become a camp director you don’t exactly need any degree mostly just experience, but I personally will be going to a bible college. I will be going to a bible school because it was something that my mentor suggested to me as that was what he did himself. A diploma or certificate in ministry would help a lot in the Christian camp business and it would give me and edge on other people wanting the director position. It would give me more bible knowledge and some finance training if I choose a certain path to follow. My mentor said that he doesn’t think that he would be where he was today without the training and knowledge that he took away from attending a bible school. So although schooling isn’t exactly necessary it is something highly suggested for the position of a camp director. The average yearly salary of a camp director in Idaho according to ziprecrutier. com is $39, 600. But camp directors in Idaho can get paid anywhere between $15, 000 and $64, 500 yearly. Sadly though the salary doesn’t often move, it’s more based on how much the camp has and if they can afford a raise. Which brings up a hazard of this occupation, funding. A camp can easily go under without proper funding or the finances to support it. Donations are such a vital part of camp, sometimes they are the way that a camp keeps it’s head above water. Donations can be given yearly, once, or once a month. Camp relies on these donations to help sponsor a kid who doesn’t have the funds to attend to get to go. The money left over from the donations to sponsor a kid go to the other dire needs around camp. Everything needs money and that can be rough in a line of work that is dependent on it. There are many rewards that come to being a camp director, it is a very gratifying experience. As a director, you get to see God work every day in people’s lives. You get to see people make life-changing decisions. You see them learn and grow, you see kids of all ages have fun in a safe environment. A camp is a place where people can just be away from the world and get away from all the demons at home. It is a place to hear wonderful sermons and learn about God and his love. A camp is a place where everyone is welcome, Christian or not. It a place that is for not only the campers to grow but the staff. It is probably one of the most rewarding experiences. I have worked in many positions at a camp and I have taken important lessons from each one. I can’t wait to see what I learn from being a director. One issue that I have brought up multiple times over the course if this paper has been financed, but there are more issues than just that. The camp industry faces many issues. One of which is health and safety, which was voted the number one issue for camp according to the American Camp Association.
When talking about health and safety when it comes to camps they are referring to not just medical needs, like allergies or if a kid is diabetic, but also the mental and social health of the campers. In fact, around 71% of camps say that MESH, mental, emotional, and social health, is a problem. These are things like depression, anxiety, and even eating disorders. As for safety, camps as of last year have to worry more about active shooters and intruders. There is more concern than ever about the safety of the campers and the staff. Another issue when it comes to running a camp is hiring adequate staff. Like stated before the staff of the camp is very important so being fortunate enough to have a good staff is rare. MESH issues are not just things that the campers deal wit, but also the staff and due to that it has been hindering the work that they do. When they are often dealing with hard things in life it can cause their work ethic to dwindle and fizzle away.
One other thing that is hard with the staff when it comes to camp is not actually a staff problem, but a director problem. Around 48% of camps struggle with encouraging the staff to give it their all. They struggle with enouring their staff and getting high quality work. And when they don’t get that high quality work the camp can go down hill, which is not to be desired. One last issue when it comes to running a camp is the parents of the campers. Some of the issues when it comes to parents communication, registering, and them being over protective. Camps often struggle when it comes to having an efficient way of communicating things like camper health, registration, and getting ahold of them during an emergency.
The second struggle, registration is so hard because parents are notoriously bad at getting it in in time or filling everything out. Registration is so so important because it is what the camp refers to in a medical emergency. If the registration isn’t filled out correctly than there is nothing to refer to and it is harder to move forward when there is a medical emergency. The final reason of parents being overprotective is bad because they often want to communicate with their kids and can be overbearing to the staff and the kid.
