Executive Summary

Camp on the Go
Industry, Customer, and Competitor Analysis
I grew up with my mom working in a camp office and spending many summers going to summer camp. I also have spent two summers working as a camp consular. The idea I had is to start a Non-Site summer camp in the Boone area. The idea is to use connections through the campus ministry I am evolved in of Westminster Canterbury Fellowship (WCF). Currently I am serving as our organization’s treasurer and have served time in the officer position of church outreach. With this organization every week our group goes to local Presbyterian churches and Episcopal churches around the area of Boone and Blowing Rock. Our group has meals with those churches and bond with the people that go there. Seven of these churches would agree to allow Westminster Canterbury Fellowship to use their site for one week at a time during the summer and the great outdoor land that they have to offer for a Christian summer camp. This would mean our camp would be open Seven weeks a year only for the summer. Along with our campus minster leader and four other WCF members we could run the camp from offsite different churches.
The competitor market in Boone has a few different summer camps. Our competitive edge comes from the fact that our camp be able to have lower prices from other camps should as the Rainbow camp. They offer more stuff to do on the mountains however the cost would be over a 100 dollars more than our camp. Rainbow Camp includes lodging for overnight camp but the cost is about $280 dollars a week we can afford to just charge about $150 dollars a week per camper. Rainbow camp has a few more advantages that we unfortunately do not like being able to have a swimming pool (Camp Rainbow, Inc.).
We also would be able to advertise through the local churches as well. We can work out with deals with the church to allow to mention there name while we work on site with them. The industry in general has taken a bit of bit due to the economy. However, it still should be successful because of the fact that kids enjoy going to camp in the summer and parents needing to go to work during the summer. The fact of our cost and hour availability should help us stay in the market successfully. We can make our benefits through these credentials. There was also another camp in the area but it was more focused on academics so its competition wouldn’t be too difficult.

Company and Product Description The basic elements included in my product would be a similar to a typical summer camp just not with a specific camp site for every week. Also some Christian elements would be tied into the camp. Each we week will have about 40 -50 kids from the age of 6-11 mainly a range of elementary school students. Each day we are able to offer various different activities of art and crafts, games and recreation. Along with those we can include nature hikes and bible studies. For five days a week our product allows you to have the time to spend at a fun and adventurous camp on the go.
The opportunity we would have is achieving a local company through building connections and blending then to work with the local community to operate a successful offsite summer camp. We company vision would be to be more nonprofit, but to still to make sure our staff got reasonably paid. Our strategy would include being able work together to manage the functions of a regular summer camp off a nonspecific site. My experience of working at summer camps in my past can help out with this.
Also along with the summer camp through the local churches, we use we will be able to use to their camp vans to go off the church site once a week probably on Thursdays. The advertising of using their van will mean the churches will not mind us using their van as long as cover gas expenses and have our campus ministry leader drive the van to make sure the parents approve of the kids riding in the van. Depending on how many people we have for camp the week we will try to have another adult volunteer or member of the church to drive another van. During those Thursdays we would try to go to different areas of interest such as things like Rafting, Tubing, different hikes or things like labyrinths to walk on. I feel like this adds a strong differing element from camps like the Rainbow Camp that primarily stays on their site for the camp week. The Thursdays will be different since no other camps really do this type of thing in the Boone and Blowing Rock area of North Carolina.
Marketing Plan Our market plan would be since there is no charge for using the site we get publicity for the churches we are using and also name drop the camp information at the local church congregations around the Boone and Blowing Rock area. The type of customer of we marketing toward include the parents of the kids of the churches along with general parents in the area. We will not deny anyone based on religious denomination; however Christian values will a part of the camp. We also can market our camp through flyers around town. Word of mouth will be strongest investment along with target marketing for the areas where the camps are going to be as well.
The pricing for the camp would be cut down a bit since we operate without having pay for the site. As I mentioned before we would aim at $150 per camp a week which would include their lunch and snacks we could provide to the campers each day. Along with this we would try to meet specific needs of campers for example if a campers was a vegetarian or was allergic to something we would make sure that they were not going to have to a lunch or snack that applied to those conditions. I feel that our price is very fair and will help to get people that want to have their kids go to our camp.
Operations
Our operations include opening 8am -5pm Monday through Friday. We would allow for dropping off around 8am in the morning and provide a snack in the morning and the afternoon and provide a lunch mid –day through a catering service. We also would have a rest break during the day to make sure the campers had plenty of energy for the second part of the day. We can potentially allow for early drop off and later pickups if needed temporarily for specific families, however if it becomes a constant issue we will not accommodate for it. As I mentioned before will be offsite meaning our location will be at a different church each week. We would mainly only use the inside of the church for arts and crafts and Bible studies. Also we would use it for the bathroom and meals. We would primarily be outside of the churches taking advantage of the land they have to offer for outdoor recreation and hiking. The equipment we would need is for craft supplies such as paper, crayons, colored pencils, markers, some paints, siroccos and a few miscellaneous things that may come up during the summer. We would also need soccer balls, Frisbees, footballs and small orange cones for recreation actives. The estimated insurance cost would around $1500 based upon a budget plan for a similar idea to this in Winston Salem Presbytery. The staff would need CPR and first aid training. The staff itself would a four person staff would each get paid about $200 dollars a week. This adding up fees of $ 5,600.00 for the staff for the summer assuming we have a four person staff. For our suppliers we would need about $900 – $1000 dollars depending on how many campers we get per week. We would try to buy our snacks to give out to the campers and work out a deal with local catering restaurant and try to sign a summer contract to get the best deal (Brown).
Our supplies would cost about $1600 throughout the summer. We also might want to pay our campus minster of Westminster Canterbury Fellowship to overview things at the camp from time to time and make sure everything is running smoothly along with for having him drive the van from when we leave from the camp to go to other areas on the Thursdays of our camp and to talk to any parents if they had more questions or comments.
Development Plan
Westminster Canterbury Fellowship would start off planning this out by various meetings before the summer starts. We would want to probably meet at least once every week starting in the spring semester if we wanted to try to get the camp up and running by the summer. We would discuss the finances and talk with the different churches to figure out which week we would be at which church. The plan would include the first summer being the base year and then the next year we would try to perfect any issues that occurred there. The presbytery along with funds from WCF would go towards the camp start up. Startup funds need would be about $5000 dollars. This would cover initial supplies, initial staffing fees and equipment needs along with insurance.
The WCF group should elect members to serve as an executive committee of the camp. The executive committee would function as the Personnel Committee of the camp and will have supervisory responsibility for the staff. The executive committee will also be able to make decisions critical to program operation when necessary between the regular meetings of the whole group. The camp team group will be able to create planning teams as needed but will have no additional standing committees besides the executive committee. As time and experience proceeds this structure may be changed. However, it does need to remain flexible and those who we are in partnership with in this new approach in the outdoor off site camp idea.
We want everyone to be prepared to go and start the camp without many doubts or worries. Our operations didn’t really plan to expand too much more than that I mentioned, since we are planned to be a small operation. However, if this operation is successful I might try something like it in a different area later on if I have free time during summers. I feel like the camp idea does not have huge room for expansions around other areas but is simple enough to carry out and possibly try different areas around the United States possibly.
Team
The staff along with our campus leader of WCF will be able to bring good chemistry to the project since we all already know each other and don’t have to go through meeting phase. We would prefer to have the team from the Westminster Canterbury Fellowship for people that already have leadership roles within the organization. We will typically meet with each other leading up the camp, but also during the summer camp once a week on Wednesdays after the campers leave. In these meetings we would be able to discuss how the week was going and things that need improving with the summer camp. We also would probably do some team building activities to help prepare us for the summer. These actives would include going out to eat together and going through some activities of the camp as team together to bond through practicing the recreation games and brain storming new games ideas for the camps. I feel like with our strong leadership and good strong connections our group would be able to work very successfully together.
Critical Risks Some critical risks that could occur to the camp are with the economy being bad; parents may not be able to afford to send their kids to camp. This would be a problem because we cannot break even if enough kids don’t sign up to go to camp. We need a certain amount of kids to go to camp because if we get 50 campers at $150 dollars a week we are able to receive $7,500 dollars a week; however that number can drop below if we have fewer campers. Another critical risk could be potentially competition form the Rainbow Camp. They have a little bit more to offer than us overall and have been around longer so they could drive away some of the business we are trying to get. Also a risk could be that we are not properly prepared for situations that occur at camp this could happen if all of our staff is not as dedicated to the job as they should be. Along with that if the staff doesn’t’ get along well during the summer that would offset the chemistry and mess things at the camp. Overall though, through properly planning and team building along with good word of mouth I feel our camp should be quite a success. These issues do not seem too hard to overcome and as we stay focused we should be able to get through them.
Financial Plan The financial plan entails a plan of $7,500 dollars coming in a week as a mentioned above. This would be about $30,000 dollars a month and a little under $60,000 dollars for the summer coming in. I’m not in it for the money though; camp is one of my passions in life along with religion and the outdoors. If we make enough money to get by doing the job everything will be okay. Staff payment per week would include about $200 dollars adding up to be about $800 a week for all for staff and $3,200 dollars a month. Food costs in one month would be around $500 dollars. Supplies and Misc. would be around $500 dollars per month. Other cost includes paying our campus ministry leader to see things which would cost about $400 a week. That would be a $1,600 cost and we pay probably about $50 dollars per gas a week making that a $200 dollar fee per month.
So per month we would get about $30,000 dollars and spend around $6,000 dollars. This would mean we would bring in around $24,000 dollars a month; however we would put that towards mission trips and other relevant Westminster Canterbury Fellowship activities and funds needed. For a year since we are only open for 7 weeks you would just about double the numbers $24000*3/4 plus the $24,000 would give you summer earnings of $42,000 dollars. This of course seems like a successful amount of money going toward the organization.
I assume that we will be able to get enough campers to make these numbers work out in the end. This allow us achieve the goals of making money for Westminster Canterbury Fellowship and to pay off the funds used to start the business up. I feel like people will want to come to this camp to save some money, so we will be able to keep these numbers constant through the time we run the business.
Conclusions
Overall, I feel like this is a great idea to pursue and should be somewhat successful. Through this idea I will not make a whole of money, however I will be able to pursue my life’s passions and get to enjoy my work. Also, I feel like this is a great opportunity to building connections with Westminster Canterbury Fellowship and local communities. Along with being able to offer cheaper, but still quality summer camp will help out people who want to send their kids to camp the summer. This sounds like a solid plan and hopefully one day we will get this camp up and running for a summer.