THEY SEE ZIPLINES, BASKETBALL, CAMPFIRES, FRIENDSHIPWE SEE THE JEWISH FUTURE

Jewish summer camp is a magical setting. Infused with Jewish values, culture, and connections to Israel, camp’s communal immersive environment allows young people to live Judaism 24/7, inspiring them with a strong sense of Jewish self and commitment to community. Jewish camp gives children and teens the opportunity to build relationships and explore what it means to be Jewish, all while playing sports, creating art, and enjoying outdoor adventures.

As the collective Jewish community struggles with waning Jewish commitment and wonders how to ensure the continuation of a strong and vibrant Judaism, those who experience Jewish camp know that camp works! Since its founding in 1998, Foundation for Jewish Camp (FJC) has promoted the value and importance of the nonprofit Jewish overnight camp experience, and communities across the United States and Canada are realizing that Jewish camp provides a positive and powerful answer to questions about the future of the Jewish community.

FJC uses a variety of approaches to enable the field of Jewish camp to deliver the best possible experience for each child at camp, and expands the opportunities available to every child who desires to attend Jewish overnight camp. As a result,

Jewish camp has steadily become accepted as an essential part of building strong Jewish identity in children and creating a robust and enduring Jewish community.

FJC concentrates its efforts on four focus areas: camper acquisition to grow enrollment; program excellence to foster retention; leadership development to ensure a strong future; and community engagement to achieve sustainability. The following are a few examples of our efforts in each of these areas.

Community by the Cabinful

Foundation for Jewish Camp works to encourage and enable more children – the future of Jewish community – to experience the transformative experience of nonprofit Jewish overnight camp, to help camps elevate their programs to new levels of excellence, and to make the Jewish community aware of and committed to the vital role camp plays in creating strong Jewish identities.

Although more than 70,000 children and 10,000 counselors attend nonprofit Jewish overnight camp each summer, there is room for thousands more.

Foundation for Jewish Camp addresses enrollment growth by raising awareness of the power of Jewish camp, providing incentives for families to try Jewish camp, confronting affordability, and identifying and helping to create new portals of entry.

The One Happy Camper program offers need-blind incentive grants to first time campers. By leveraging partnerships between FJC and 60 local organizations across North America – camps, national camping movements, community organizations, and federations – we have been able to provide incentives for nearly 40,000 new campers, leading to steady growth in overall camper numbers.

In the increasingly competitive summer camp industry, the Specialty Camp Incubator creates new options that address market demand for more focused summer options, attracting campers who might never have considered Jewish camping to these high-quality specialty experiences

that provide a fun, Jewish environment. The first five new specialty camps are already highly successful entities and four new camps will be launched in summer 2014.

New camps and camps operating below their enrollment capacity have the greatest potential for growth. The Capacity Building Initiative engages participants in a series of hands-on, interactive workshops on topics such as financial management, sales and marketing, customer service, camp operations, and program design. Each camp director receives ongoing support from an FJC consultant who provides individual guidance and training, empowering camps to reach new levels of success.

One of the leading obstacles to camp attendance at the lower end of the economic spectrum is the high cost of registration. While most camps provide scholarships, that isn’t enough to reach every child who wants to go to camp. FJC’s Project SABABA is identifying new strategies and camping models that will provide both a lower-cost camp option and a high quality experience like campers currently enjoy at Jewish camp.

Camper Acquisition

We develop training and programming modules that highlight the diversity of

Jewish experiences, resulting in enriched and strengthened

Jewish communities.

Foundation for Jewish Camp works with camps from all streams of Jewish belief and practice – more than 150 in all – to ensure that over 70,000 children and 10,000

counselors have transformative Jewish experiences each summer.

Foundation for Jewish Camp gives the field access to innovative programming and promotes out-of-the-box thinking to enhance camp culture, increase Jewish values, and retain more campers.

Nadiv is a ground-breaking initiative that creates exciting connections between camps and schools, leveraging unique skill sets and best practices for the benefit of both. This pilot program has created six experiential Jewish educator positions being shared by overnight camps and Jewish day or synagogue schools, allowing both to benefit from these extraordinary Jewish educators. The Goodman Camping Initiative for Modern Israel, developed and implemented collaboratively with the iCenter, deepens campers’ and staffs’ knowledge of contemporary Israel history and culture. The experiential learning environment at camp provides the ideal setting for compelling Israel education, forging greater connections between campers and the Jewish state. The program features an in-house modern Israel educator and five senior staff in each camp who are being intensively trained in a learner-centered curriculum, specifically developed for this initiative. The program will expand to 36 camps over a four year period.

Lekhu Lakhem: Jewish Educational Journeys for Camp Directors is a new initiative for FJC in collaboration with JCC Association’s Mandel Center for Jewish Education which will bring this proven program to the greater field of Jewish camp. Two previous cohorts have shown that when camp directors are empowered as knowledgeable Jewish educators, the Jewish content at camp is vastly enhanced and

transmitted to campers and counselors alike. New to non-JCC camps, for the first time ten camp directors will undertake this two-year immersive Jewish educational journey and transmit their new-found knowledge to their camps.

Camp parents are the core of a camp’s business. Camper Satisfaction Insights (CSI) provides a look at what parents and campers really think of everything—from programming and pricing, to safety and food. This in-depth market research tool helps camps pinpoint strengths and weaknesses according to respondents’ feedback. By revealing potential areas for improvement, camp management can identify an action plan that will help them to better serve parents, campers, and their budgets. In conjunction with JData, this tool also allows FJC to evaluate the field as a whole and tackle problems strategically.

Accurate statistics about the field help FJC communicate the power of Jewish camp, as well as create and improve our many programs. We are a national partner of JData, an online database and free powerful tool available to camps. The system tracks key data on enrollment, retention, governance, staffing, finance, and programs from year-to-year, and against similar organizations.

Foundation for Jewish Camp focuses on both lay and professional development to take the field of Jewish camp to new heights.

Camp directors work year-round, including overseeing multi-million dollar budgets, hiring and supervising a staff

Program Excellence

Leadership Development

of several hundred, supervising physical sites, working with boards of directors, initiating new programs, and much more. The Executive Leadership Institute (ELI) provides seasoned professionals in the field of Jewish camp with the business, management, and leadership skills required to enrich their camps and compete in the summer camp marketplace, 52 elite camp leaders have already participated in ELI which is characterized as an executive MBA program for the 21st century camp director. The most recent ELI cohort involved directors working side-by-side with lay leaders, strengthening the lay-professional bond.

The Yitro Leadership Program trains assistant and associate directors to build vibrant, intentional camp communities that are infused with Jewish values, ethics, culture, and spirit. The program supports our ongoing effort to bring top-level executive management practices to Jewish camp, and develop camp experiences that shape and secure children’s Jewish identity for the future. 39 assistant and associate camp directors have benefited from this intensive training experience to date.

The Cornerstone Fellowship promotes Jewish culture change at camp by offering Jewish educational training to exemplary returning bunk staff and professional development to camp leaders. Cornerstone empowers counselors to play a larger creative role in Jewish programming and employs leading experiential Jewish educators to deliver a cutting-edge training experience at a four-day seminar. Over the past decade, Cornerstone has trained 1900 fellows representing more than 60 camps.

The biggest ideas and boldest solutions for the field of Jewish camp come from its leaders. Leaders Assembly is a biennial conference that brings together hundreds of professionals and lay leaders from the camping world, as well as funders and Jewish communal professionals, to address the opportunities and challenges facing the field of Jewish camp. Together, we reach beyond our comfort zones to explore new possibilities for the field, and develop exciting new synergies to strengthen our camp community.

Foundation for Jewish Camp is creating avenues for camps to connect with communities, schools, JCCs, and synagogues, to share educational best practices and drive enrollment. These relationships will further increase momentum in stimulating broad conversations to generate greater investment in camp.

Synagogue Initiatives Although more than 70,000 children and 10,000 counselors attend nonprofit Jewish overnight camp each summer, there is room for thousands more. Over the past two years, FJC launched several pilot initiatives across the northeast to promote Jewish overnight camp within synagogues. Through these pilots, we are exploring a child’s Jewish education as a year-round endeavor, seeking to create linkages between camps and congregations and increase the number of children attending Jewish overnight camp.

Engagement InitiativesJewish overnight camps have been able to engage thousands of new campers over the past several years, yet the Russian-speaking, Israeli, Latin, and Iranian Jewish populations remain virtually untapped. In efforts to strengthen camps’ ability

to attract campers and staff from these communities, we work closely with community partners to develop marketing and recruitment initiatives that will peak the interest of Russian-speaking families and Israelis, in particular. As a result of these efforts, the numbers of campers from these backgrounds has nearly tripled in the past several years. Additionally, we develop training and programming modules that highlight the diversity of Jewish experiences, resulting in enriched and strengthened Jewish communities.

Community Camp InitiativesThe work of FJC, and notably One Happy Camper, has served as an impetus to further community support of nonprofit Jewish overnight camp. As camp receives greater recognition as a successful educational and Jewish identity-building vehicle, new advocates are getting involved with, and philanthropic investments are being made to local federations to support the field of Jewish camp.

These community partners turn to FJC to provide expert counsel on how their community can build upon their initial One Happy Camper investment to ensure that their children have the ability to return to camp and that their experience at camp is as meaningful and impactful as possible.

Community Engagement

Foundation for Jewish Camp has grown to be regarded as one of the highest-performing and critically important organizations helping to ensure the North American Jewish future. Leading researchers agree that Jewish camp builds Jewish identity, Jewish community, and Jewish leadership for successive generations. We know that Jewish overnight camp inspires a lifelong commitment to Jewish living.

FJC works with camps from all streams of Jewish belief and practice – more than 150 in all – to ensure that tens of thousands of campers and counselors alike have transformative Jewish experiences each summer. Your support will help us continue to realize our mission to significantly increase the number of children who experience summers at Jewish camp, turning Jewish youth into spirited and engaged Jewish adults, laying the groundwork for strong Jewish communities.

Please consider a contribution to Foundation for Jewish Camp. You will be contributing to the Jewish future.

To donate online visit www.jewishcamp.org/support

Or mail your contribution toFoundation for Jewish Camp253 West 35th Street, 4th FloorNew York, NY 10001

For more information about supporting Foundation for Jewish Camp, please contact Fani Magnus Monson, Vice-President, Financial Resource Development, at 646.278.4522 or by email at fani@jewishcamp.org

150+ Camps

70,000+ Campers

10,000+ Counselors

A VIBRANT JEWISH FUTURE

FOUNDATION FOR JEWISH CAMP253 West 35th Street, 4th FloorNew York, NY 10001

www.jewishcamp.org

Our Mission

The Foundation for Jewish Camp unifies and galvanizes the field of nonprofit Jewish overnight camp and significantly increases the number of children participating in transformative summers at Jewish camp, assuring a vibrant North American Jewish community.

Our Vision

Summers at nonprofit Jewish overnight camp turn Jewish youth into spirited and engaged Jewish adults, laying the groundwork for strong Jewish communities. The Foundation for Jewish Camp aspires to elevate the field of Jewish camp, conferring proper recognition and granting appropriate support to expand its impact across our community, so that camp can be a critical element of every Jewish young person’s education.

Elisa Spungen BildnerRobert BildnerCo-founders and Co-chairs, Board Of Trustees

Lee D. Weiss, Chair, Board Of Directors

Jeremy J. Fingerman, CEOFani Magnus Monson, VP, Financial Resource Development