Provide Team-Building for Increased Camp Income
photo credit: Luigi Mengato
Team Building activities are valuable for your summer camp staff and for your campers. They help them to work better together and increase communication skills. Through fun Team Building games, you help staff and campers alike to learn to work together to solve problems, to listen well to each other, to show respect to others, and to be willing to try “out of the box” ideas.”
If your camp operates year round, consider offering year round Team Building programs. This is a market that is often overlooked. Schools, sports teams, corporations, homeschool groups, clubs, and youth groups are looking for ways to widen the experiences of their members and staff members so that they will function better as a team. You know the benefits of Team Building activities, for you have seen first hand the positive results in your summer camp program. By communicating with other groups and helping them to see the positive results of Team Building programs, you can market the Team Building opportunities that your camp offers.
Team Building is so valuable that people are willing to pay well for quality programs. Many corporations are spending big budgets for team building programs for teams of people who work together in different departments. Schools have certain amounts of money set aside for staff training, and training teachers and administrators to work together as a team is valuable training for them. It is likely that your camp can offer a program much less expensively than what they are charged for trainers who come to them.
Your camp facilities can offer a higher quality experience that will benefit them more than what they get in a conference room or hotel setting. Using the great outdoors and/or your gym or rec hall facility will add a dimension to your Team Building Program that can’t be replicated by many Team Building specialists who do not have such facilities to offer. If you serve weekend retreat groups, you can offer them Team Building as an add-on experience to their retreat, for an extra fee, of course. And your camp can organize weekday programs for companies, schools, homeschool groups, etc.
One camp, which marketed their availability for Team Building to a corporation, got rave reviews for a day at camp that they provided. They used Team Building games and activities, a lovely lunch, and optional activities on their ropes course and climbing wall. They also provided a meeting room for the company managers to have a closing meeting and dinner with their staff.
To start a Team Building program which goes beyond your normal summer camp activities, you’ll need to keep staff members trained and expand their experiences with facilitating team building. You need to have staff professionals or contract with professionals who can guide the activities and lead discussions to help groups process how to transfer their experiences into their work, team, club, or whatever type of activities they normally do together. Groups such as Project Adventure offer staff training that will prepare your staff to offer a top quality program.
You may also need to work with a camp consultant who will help with developing marketing materials and web advertising to attract customers. Combining a high quality program, a competitive fee structure, and correct marketing, will bring you year-round business that will help to pay the bills that come with operating a year-round camp.