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Description
All of us who work in camps believe in the value of the camp experience and wish that every child could spend at least part of his or her summer at camp. The American Camp Association (ACA) believes so strongly in the positive benefits of the camp experience that one of the Ends of the Association is to increase the number of children, youth, and adults of all social, cultural, and economic groups who can attend camp. This fall we again collected information to create a snapshot of how camps felt they did on enrollment for the summer of 2006.
Thanks to the camps who took time to complete the survey and to the encouragement given them by our local office executives, we had 624 camps complete the Web-based survey (23 percent response rate). The camps who answered the survey were representative of the ACA camp community in terms of type and affiliation and so provided an accurate view of enrollment (see sidebar on page 62). To have comparable information, we asked directors to indicate their total enrollment in camper weeks rather than total campers as a way to equalize different session lengths. For example, if one hundred campers attended for one week, that was equal to a hundred camper weeks. However, if one hundred campers attended camp for eight weeks, that was eight hundred camper weeks. The questions were almost identical to the 2005 enrollment survey; therefore, we can make comparisons across years. While the survey also asked questions about staff recruitment, this article discusses only the camper enrollment data.
Overview of Summer 2006 Enrollment
The overall view on enrollment from directors was that the 2006 summer season was a good summer for the majority of camps and slightly better than they reported in last year's survey. Over 48 percent of the camps indicated that this summer was the highest or higher than most of the past five summers for enrollment, while another 23 percent of the directors thought enrollment was about the same. However, some directors (18 percent) provided a different view on enrollment when they indicated they had fewer campers this summer than most of the past five summers, and for some camps (12 percent), the 2006 summer was their worst enrollment for that five-year period. When compared to their potential capacity, almost half of the camps (49 percent) operated at 90-100 percent capacity. About a quarter of the camps operated at 80-89 percent capacity, and another quarter operated at less than 80 percent capacity. Over 70 percent... |
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