Summer camp: Staffing and supply hurdles, but no shortage of fun

Zoa Archer planned to be back at camp this summer. She’d already accepted a job at Camp Summer Fenn in Concord, Massachusetts, and knew how desperate the camp was for staff. It had even asked her to name her own salary. 

But the college student pulled out at the last minute when the opportunity arose to spend the summer at Oxford University studying Renaissance literature. 

“It was hard to decide,” says Ms. Archer, an aspiring college professor, “because I love my camp.”

From the smell of sunscreen and mosquito repellent to exasperatingly catchy campfire songs that stick well into fall, summer camps around the United States have long offered campers and counselors a home away from home. Since the pandemic, parents are more eager than ever to get their children off screens, into nature, and practicing rusty social skills, says Sarah Kurtz McKinnon, co-founder and CEO of The Summer Camp Society, and some camps are reporting record registration numbers. 

But camps are finding it harder than expected to return to business as usual because of what Ms. Kurtz McKinnon calls a “perfect storm” of problems.  

Many camps have struggled to attract counselors, like Ms. Archer, with some failing to find enough staff to open. Supply shortages have eased since last year, but are still causing challenges. 

And the pandemic isn’t over. Shifting protocols are forcing camps to think on their feet, while they respond to lingering mental health challenges and lockdown-induced gaps in social learning. 

Despite the challenges, most summer camps are coping by innovating, say industry experts, reassessing how they’ve done business for decades – and developing creative solutions to unexpected problems. 

“Camps needed pressure to update some of the things that they’ve been scraping by on for a long time,” says Ms. Kurtz McKinnon. “The market has demanded that camps improve.” 

Adapting job requirements 

For starters, camps are learning to be more flexible.  

Belmont Day camp director Zach d’Arbeloff is used to competing with academic programs and internships for skilled counselors. But this year, he’s noticed a change: Counselors aren’t just happy to have a job anymore, he says. They’re much more vocal about their employment needs and desires, from salary and scheduling to work-life balance. 

“It’s a positive thing,” he says. “And it requires that I, as a camp director, rethink my relationship with those staff in order to meet them where they are.”

This year, he dropped the minimum time requirement to four weeks with this guideline: “Give me what you can give me during the summer, and we’re going to find a way to make that work.” 

Instead of requiring lifeguards to be certified, the camp now certifies them. And staff shortages have meant Mr. d’Arbeloff can promote junior counselors over the summer – a silver lining, he says. 

At Birch Trail Camp for Girls in Wisconsin, flexibility has meant looking beyond the conventional pool of applicants, says director Gabe Chernov, who this year felt the frustration of “ghosting” – when someone accepts a position but doesn’t follow through. So he reached out to parents and campers from decades past to fill higher-skilled positions such as wilderness trip leaders and social workers. 

“We’ve historically recruited a lot of people through different outdoor programs at colleges,” says Mr. Cherbov. “Now instead of targeting the students, we’re targeting the professors.” Older and wiser staffers, he adds, have been a “phenomenal” blessing for the whole camp, and they’re planning to return next year. 

Adaptability is expensive: Birch Trail doubled a number of salaries this summer, with payroll on the whole at least 40% higher than last year, he says.

And at a time when food costs have increased 35% to 40% since last summer, he’s chosen not to pass costs on this year to campers, who are also feeling the effects of the economy through shortages. 

At Camp Putnam, nestled in the evergreens of central Massachusetts, the kids’-menu staples of orange juice and chicken have been hard to find, says director Todd Stewart, whose mother – the head cook – strategizes alternatives when they run out. The camp has also struggled to keep the swimming pool open for lack of replacement parts for pumps, and paper goods and cleaning products are often on back order.

Camps are also doing more to support staff and campers emotionally following a pandemic that has tested the mental health of everyone by hiring social workers and psychologists, or partnering with telehealth and teletherapy organizations. 

In light of cultural change, camps no longer operate in a vacuum, says Ms. Kurtz McKinnon, and many are taking steps to become more inclusive. 

“Typical camps in the United States have a history of appropriating Indigenous cultures, of playing make-believe with real cultures,” she says. “So there’s been a lot of dismantling of traditions.” And some camps are incorporating language and facilities to make camp as welcoming as possible for transgender or gender-nonconforming campers and staff.

“So much has changed socially, culturally, from a physical health standpoint, from a mental health standpoint. It’s a completely new world,” she says.

“The most humbling experience”  

Before COVID-19, summer camps in the U.S. served 26 million children and teens in over 15,000 camps, staffed by 1.2 million seasonal employees, says Tom Rosenberg, president of the American Camp Association. While the camp industry hasn’t hit those numbers this year, he adds, “Demand seems to be surpassing what we saw pre-COVID. And meeting that demand is the challenge.” 

On the staffing front, the key for camps now is to better communicate the intangible value of working at camp, he says. “The most valued skill in terms of what you get paid and [your] career in the future is human-based skill. ... That’s what we do,” says Mr. Rosenberg, who points to conflict management, communication, leadership, and on-the-fly creativity as a few of the knacks that counselors pick up. 

Nick Lareau, for one, knows that well. Six summers as a counselor at Camp Putnam amount to “the most humbling experience I’ve ever had,” the pre-med college student says over the whoop and holler of dodgeball. “There’s nothing that makes you feel better about yourself, or what you can do for other people,” he says of days spent teaching kids to ride bikes or nights singing songs in cabins. 

Camper Caylee Constance McGann, who is 12, considers Mr. Lareau something like an older brother – and wants to pass that same joy along to others when she’s old enough: “I’ve always dreamt of being a camp counselor here. I would like to make some other little kid’s year much better.”