The Staff Appreciation Guide is a resource, developed by SAC, in response to data from the 2023 Staff Satisfaction Insights Survey, which stated only about two-thirds of staff felt appreciated and valued for their work at camp in 2022. These professionals suggest that showing appreciation for staff members, whether a small or large gesture, throughout the summer is an efficient tool to increase staff retention and overall satisfaction with the staff experience. The guide presents ten approaches with supplementary examples that year-round camp professionals and summer leadership can utilize to express gratitude for the efforts exhibited by their staff members.

To camp insiders, there is no debate around the value of a summer camp counselor experience. However, young professionals with this job included on their resumes are struggling to communicate the skills this position fosters and their transferability into corporate settings. This piece, developed by SAC, dives into the broadness of the camp counselor role and the increasing demand to improve the public perception of this job. Their solution includes a series of specialized internship roles, that can be incorporated into a counselor’s job description for a summer, which will provide a more enriching and targeted growth opportunity within that individual’s field of study or area of interest. They predict that not only will this benefit the staff member’s experience and enhance their resume, but ultimately these investments will reverse the cycle of young staff members leaving the camp community to pursue summer internships.

Sport at Jewish camp is a complex and dynamic experience for campers. Like artistic, musical,
and other Jewish experiential education experiences at camp, there is a wide spectrum of how
campers and counselors show up at the sports fields. Because of this, it is difficult to find the right
balance of being fun, competitive, educational, and inclusive when designing a sports program
in the context of Jewish camp. Supervisors, sports staff, and camp counselors sometimes lack
the resources, training, and language required to create an all-encompassing sports program
grounded in the camp’s values. These gaps lead to volatile competitive environments, which can
result in poor behavior from overly-competitive campers and disengagement from other campers.
This resource aims to address these issues by exploring how to create a supportive environment
for competition. In this guide, competition is defined as, “The intra/interpersonal dynamics of
winning and losing.” Competition and how it is consumed by children and young adults drives
their recreational sport experience. When used correctly, it can be the tool that develops a new
passions, relationships, and transformative experiences for a camper at sport. Whether your daily
sports program’s main goal is to have fun, catalyze skill development, or to replicate organized
game/league experiences, the aspect of competition is constant and must be attended to.

This resource accomplishes the following:

• Contextualizes how your sports program should align with the mission of your camp
  by providing recommendations on how to create a program that is predicated
  on healthy competition.
• Showcases a 90-minute staff training activity for Camp Athletic Directors
  and Heads of Sport to prepare their teams ahead of opening day.
• Shares best practices and tips for sports instruction and building a sports program.
• Provides sports-related language and phrases in Hebrew for sport-staff
  instructors/coaches to use with campers.

This guide is intended for the use of camp athletic directors/heads of sports programming
as they prepare ahead of opening day at camp.

This report evaluates the impact of the 2021 One Happy Camper Program (OHC) implemented by 105 partner organizations (local Jewish federations, foundations and camps) throughout North America. This past summer 9,720 children received first-time OHC grants, an increase of 41% from 2019. This increase is exceptionally high compared to past years due to the cancellation in summer 2020 where there were no new campers. For reference, 47% of this year’s research recipients indicated that they were supposed to be a first-time camper in summer 2020.

Since 2006, FJC has partnered with communities across North America on the One Happy Camper program to grow enrollment and increase awareness. Tens of thousands of campers have experienced Jewish overnight camp as a result of this program. This detailed report shows the successes of the OHC program this year and its influence in a family’s decision to choose Jewish overnight camp.

Created by the Genesis Philanthropy Group and conducted in partnership with the Foundation for Jewish Camp (FJC), the Russian-Speaking Jewish Camp Outreach Initiative (RSJ Initiative) works to engage more campers and staff from the Russian-speaking Jewish (RSJ) community in North American Jewish camps. A grant from Genesis Philanthropy Group to FJC supports 15 camps in building capacity to recruit RSJ campers as well as provide the campers with a high quality camp experience. FJC supports these camps with consultation and training, and through the One Happy Camper® (OHC) incentive program and camp scholarships. Since 2013, the RSJ Initiative has helped 15 camps enroll approximately 1,300 new and returning RSJ campers in their programs.

In 2017, the Genesis Philanthropy Group partnered with Informing Change to conduct an evaluation of the Initiative. Informing Change surveyed RSJ campers who attended camp between 2014–17 and studied a subset of OHC survey data collected from 2014–17 from RSJ parents, identified by country of origin. Grant reports from participating camps to FJC were also reviewed. In addition, camp directors and RSJ camp counselors from RSJ Initiative camps were interviewed, as well as FJC staff.

Summer 2017 Evaluation of FJC Ruderman/Alexander Inclusion Initiative intended to identify, define, and evaluate inclusive camp practices and explore best practices for inclusion and accessibility for people in the camp community with disabilities.

Jewish day camp has reached a pivotal moment, and Foundation for Jewish Camp (FJC) now has the research, data, and supporting literature to capitalize on it.  The following reports and data unearth the positive long-term impacts of Jewish day camp, lay out a blueprint for how FJC can help day camps increase impact, and analyze current outstanding models of engaging families with young children through high-quality Jewish day camps. This initial research conducted by Dr. Judith Samuels and Ramie Arian under the guidance and in close partnership with Jenni Zeftel, FJC’s Director of Day Camp and Strategic Programs, and Marci Soifer, FJC’s Operations and Planning Director, also points to the feasibility of creating new day camps and leveraging new models such as day camps that are co-branded with overnight camps. By sharing this knowledge and these new metrics for day camp impact, FJC hopes to  better ensure engagement of the youngest members of the Jewish community, their families, and young staff in order to build a bright Jewish future through transformative Jewish day camp summers.

This presents findings from the One Happy Camper (OHC) Retention Study, fielded March 9-April 2, 2017
among 23,925 families who received OHC incentives in 2012 through 2015. In total, 20% (4,728) of OHC
families responded and participated in the study. Findings were consistent with those in 2012, showing
very strong retention, even up to four summers after having received the initial OHC incentive.

Download to read the full report