Articles

Camps solve the photo problem three ways: a dedicated platform, the features bundled into their management software, or taking the phones away and handing kids a camera. A guide to choosing your photo stack — including the biometric-data questions to ask before the demo ends.

By Maggie Holloway · July 31, 2026

Where camp staff actually come from — returners, your own community, local hiring, job boards, and the J-1 pipeline — and how the answer changes for overnight camps, day camps, nonprofits, and the soccer camp at the local field.

By Maggie Holloway · July 14, 2026

A plain-English guide to background screening for camps — what a check actually covers, the questions that separate a real screening partner from a database lookup, and why a clean report is the beginning of child safety, not the end.

By Maggie Holloway · July 12, 2026

Choosing camp management software? Skip the feature checklist. Here's what actually matters — support, payments, data portability, and the ownership question — plus a neutral comparison of the major camp registration platforms and who each is built for.

By Maggie Holloway · June 24, 2026

Custom camp T-shirts, swag, name labels, and sun gear: what to order, when to order it, and the hidden fees that catch camps off guard. A plain-English field guide to buying camp apparel without the mid-summer panic.

By Maggie Holloway · June 17, 2026

A plain-English guide to buying camp insurance well — the questions worth asking, the coverage that actually matters for camps, and the gaps (like abuse coverage) that only surface at claim time. Not a ranking of insurers; a guide to making the decision.

By Maggie Holloway · June 3, 2026

Next-summer registration used to be a January project. Now it opens in August — sometimes before the season ends. Why re-enrollment keeps moving earlier, the economics driving it, and how to run an early launch without burning family goodwill.

By Maggie Holloway · July 27, 2026

The way parents find and vet camps is changing. Most of it is hype — but a few parts are real, and worth a camp director's attention. What the shift from search to AI answers actually means for how families find, vet, and trust your camp.

By Maggie Holloway · May 27, 2026

Every night at 10 PM, a parent is refreshing your camp's photo gallery like it's a stock ticker. A former director on what the photo feed actually is — retention marketing, a trust machine, and the hardest unassigned job at camp — and how good operations run it.

By Denny Marsh · July 24, 2026

A plain-English look at the busiest room at camp: what the health center job really demands now, why mental and emotional health has quietly become the biggest part of it, and the medication and records gaps that surface only when a parent is on the phone.

By Maggie Holloway · June 10, 2026

Whether you run an overnight camp, a day camp, a Y program, or a soccer camp staffed by varsity players, the cheapest hire is the one you already know — and the window to lock in next summer's staff is the last two weeks of this one.

By Denny Marsh · July 20, 2026

Nobody puts the mess hall on the brochure. But it might be the hardest-working room at camp — and the one campers remember longest.

By Maggie Holloway · May 20, 2026

Every camp's whole year is built toward a few days that arrive like a wave. Here's what actually happens when the buses pull in — and what experienced directors do differently.

By Maggie Holloway · May 13, 2026