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Getting Kids to Young Life Camp: Eliminating the Five Excuses
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Getting Kids To Young Life Camp: Eliminating The Five Excuses Most of us are convinced there are few better ways to introduce our friends to the Gospel than at Young Life camp. Most of us are also currently discouraged because many of our friends will not get that chance this summer. Why not? Why are kids not going to camp? Over the years I continue to hear five main reasons why my high school friends say they can't go. In a majority of cases, we can help eliminate these excuses.
The Five Excuses
• My Friends Aren't Going • I Don't Have The Money • My Parents Won't Let Me • I Have Schedule Conflicts • I'm Afraid Of The Unknown
Part 1: Friends The Problem: My Friends Aren't Going This is the big one that makes total sense. We wouldn't go to a two-‐hour party, much less an eight-‐day trip, if none of our friends were going. So why should we expect our middle and high school friends to do the same? The Solution: Getting Them To Go With A Group Of Their Friends. One way I've found to make this happen is by making a smaller ask. Asking kids to pay hundreds of dollars and commit a week of their short summer is a big request. Asking kids to meet for dinner is much more doable. Here's one idea: Invite a group of your high school friends over this weekend for a cookout. Co-‐ed groups can actually work better for when you get the gals to go, the guys will want to go, and vice versa. Tell them you want to show them two short movies at the cookout. Leave them in suspense as to what you'll show them. For the first movie I recommend showing a classic they've probably never seen. It’s called “Hands On A Hard Body” and can be rented on Netflix. There are a few great things about this film:
• Just over an hour long, so short enough to show a 2nd movie. • Good chance no one has seen it and it's the original 'reality show.' • You can pause it half way through and make wagers on who wins the truck. • It leaves you with that Napoleon Dynamite feeling of "I can't believe I just spent an hour watching that,
it was so stupid, but wow, I feel so much closer to everyone I just shared this experience with."
After you've bonded by watching HOAHB, you'll be ready to pop in movie #2, which will be the camp video. But not the camp video for the property you're going to this summer. The camp video from last summer, starring people they know and recognize from their high school. Get a camper who went last year to bring his or her copy of the Camp DVD and play it for everyone. Afterwards have that camper share 5 reasons why they think everyone should go.
Have camp forms there along with detailed info about a fundraising plan. Give them a letter to take home to their parents with your contact info, anticipating questions they might ask. Then give them an immediate next step with incentive. Talk with your AD and see if the area can throw any any camp scholarship $ at this (or better yet, try to raise it yourself.) Then offer $50 off camp to the first two two folks to bring you a filled out form along with a $ deposit. Once you knock down two dominoes, the rest rest start to fall. We've got to realize that individually most high schoolers aren't going to call their friends and say, "Let's go on this trip together." Few have the confidence to do that. But if you get them in the same room, all nodding their heads at the same time, that fear of being alone quickly fades. As Rindercella would say, "The storal of the moray is..." Make an initial smaller ask. Instead of asking for a camp deposit and a week of their life, convince them to give you two hours for a free free burger and two mysterious movies. Once you can get their attention in a smaller non-‐club environment, environment, you'll have the platform to make the bigger ask.
Part 2: Money One of the main stressors in most teenagers' lives is MONEY. When they see camp flyers they often skip right over the description promising "The Best Week of Your Life." Their eyes focus right on the $$$. "There's NO WAY my parents can pay for that!" "I'm already saving for a car." "I still owe them $300 for my drinking ticket and lawyer." We can go blue in the face telling kids "Don't let money keep you from going!" BUT... until we show them (and their parents) a plan for how we're going to raise the cash flow, our words are empty promises. How To Communicate The Plan
• Create information in an online format that is easily accessible for parents. • Consider making a simple video of yourself explaining how the fundraisers work. Embed the video on
your area's YL site or on your club's Facebook group. • Make hard copies of the plan. Keep them in your car so you can be prepared to give them to a parent
or potential camper along with the camp registration form. • Consider including the fundraising plan on the back of your camp flyers. • Make individual phone calls to parents. Give them the website to visit so you can both view the plan as
you walk them through it.
The Fundraising Plan
• Lay out the total cost • Ask them to pay the deposit • Ask them what additional they can pay • Break down the fundraisers with practical examples of how they could raise the remainder along with
how much time it would take.
Example: $799 (Total Cost) -‐ $150 (deposit) -‐ $100 (could pay additional) -‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐ $ 550 (left to raise) -‐ $50 (from carwash general donations: 3 hrs.) -‐$175 (Trash-‐A-‐Thon sponsors, 7 people giving $25 each: 3 hrs.) -‐$150 (Selling coupon books, greeting cards or Yankee Candles: 5 hrs.) -‐$100 (YL Yard Sale: 4 hrs.) -‐$75 (Yard work for a friend of YL: 4 hrs.) -‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐ $0 remaining camp balance after 19 hours of work GREAT FUNDRAISERS Carwash Location is key. Find a busy road and ask to use a parking lot in view of the road. We've had success with Chick-‐fil-‐a, Wal-‐Mart, and grocery stores in the past. You will probably make $200-‐$400 in donations if you have 20 kids wash cars for 3 hrs. That's not even minimum wage per kid. In order to boost the kitty, you can find donors to match donations or have kids get sponsors. The Best Carwash Secret: About 2 hrs. in, when kids are getting tired and discouraged by the $2 donations, have a pre-‐arranged friend show up to get their car washed. They were going to donate $100 to campership anyway, why not throw a $100 bill in the pot and encourage the kids to keep going strong for the last hour. Yard Sale Publicize well. Start early in the morning. Make sure you have lots of stuff to sell. Go to churches, neighbors, family, friends and collect people's junk. Three weeks before the Yard Sale designate a place where you can store the goods, maybe an unused classroom in a church? Have the campers label every item they brought so when customers check out, the parent cashier knows where to credit the $. Greeting Card Boxes Call ‘Paper Magic,’ a paper company in Scranton, PA (for all you "Office" fans out there, I'm not even kidding.) Call 800-‐328-‐9257 ext. 249. Talk to Diane. You can order 100 of these boxes for under $575.00. Your cost is less than $6/box, but you can sell them for $25/box because there are 24 All-‐Occasion greeting cards in each one (along with a nice decorative storage box that they come in.) Profit margin=almost $20/box. Sitting in front of places of business (like Chick-‐Fil-‐A or a grocery store) works great to sell them. Make sure you get permission ahead of time from the management. Lowes Foods & Harris Teeter asked me to call headquarters and both turned me down because they have limited solicitation spots and I called too late. Last year King Soopers and Safeway both gave me permission, granted by the in-‐store managers. Some of the leaders on our team placed them at their offices and folks they worked with bought them. I'm selling them at church next week. Have your high school friends knock on the doors of their friends and ask their parents. It’s really a good product for a fair price and sells for the same price on Amazon.
Support Letters Last week we got a letter in the mail from a friend who is a YL leader in another area asking for $ to help take his friends to camp. We sent him some. Why? Because I can't think of a much better investment to make in someone's life. If you ask your friends and cast vision for them as to how incredible an investment this will be in a high school student's life, they will support you. Ask your high school friends to send out letters too. Yardwork/Housework For Friends Of YL Jim Rayburn started a movement 70 years ago that has impacted millions of lives. There are 60 year olds in your community who still remember their first YL camp experience. Now they have good jobs and have to give some tax-‐deductible money away. They would love for you to move that pile of wood from under their deck or pick weeds out of their garden. Just ask. They'll pay your high school friends way more than they deserve because they learned 30 years ago at YL camp about this thing called grace that changed their life forever. Trash-‐A-‐Thon Find sponsors per back of trash you pick up to clean up the highway. One of our gals made $350 in an hour doing this last weekend.
Bowl-‐A-‐Thon Fun YL outing to do after club has stopped for the year! Kids and leaders both can get pledges per pin they would bowl over three games. Most kids get pledges of 5-‐10 cents per pin. If a student gets around $2 per pin in total sponsorships and knock down 300 pins in 3 games, that's $600! You can also get businesses to be lane sponsors (much like hole sponsors at a golf tournament) to cover the overhead cost for the lanes and the food. Missions Trip Products If you're going on a missions trip bring back something unique from that place and sell it as a camp fundraiser. Example: coffee from Latin America (buy for $4/lb.) and sell it for $15/lb. Other Fundraising Ideas That Have Worked Asking Friends On Facebook, Bake Sale, Run a 5K, Selling Coupon Books, Selling Yankee Candles, Working Concession Stands at local events, Using Donation Sites Like GiveLoud.com
Part 3: Parents Fifteen years ago Young Life leaders generally had much better relationships with the parents of their high school friends. Why? Because teenagers didn't own cell phones, so in order to contact them a leader had to call the home phone. This often resulted in conversations with parents. One key in getting your high school friends to camp is to not only invest in a relationship with them, but also with their parents. Not many parents will quickly shell out hundreds of dollars to ship their kid off with someone they don't know. Most parents would love to know you better, even if they have not made any effort to do so. If we want to take their children to camp we must step out of our comfort zones and build relationships with moms and dads.
Keys To Interacting With Parents
• Respect. As a general rule, refer to them as Mr. or Mrs. unless you are married, a parent yourself, or over 25. If they give you permission to call them by their first name, go with that.
• Call Instead Of Text. Calling communicates that you are a responsible adult whereas a text message appears less confident and more adolescent.
• Present Yourself As An Adult, even if you're only 19. Realize they may call your phone and get your voice mail. Will the greeting they hear lead them to trust you more or think of you as irresponsible? When they facebook stalk you, what pictures will they see? When a parent snoops in their teenager's text messages, what will the texts you wrote communicate about you?
• Know Your Stuff. Parents will want details about camp. Do you have a fundraising plan? Do you know what they'll need to bring? Do you know how to describe a typical day at camp, or the sleeping and bathroom situations?
• Predict Their Concerns And Prepare Answers. Last week I called a dad to ask if his son could come to camp. He told me that he couldn't trust his son to be away from home and needed to keep him on lock down this summer. I promised him that his son, other than using the bathroom, would always be with a leader. I explained our value of leader-‐centered camping: we're not just chaperones letting kids roam around, but adult friends seizing every opportunity to share life with our friends.
• Cast Vision. Describe your hopes for the trip and for their child. Tell them about your own experience and what influenced you in becoming a YL leader. Speak to the ways you have seen camp impact kids in the past and the potential you see in their child.
• Know When To Stop Pushing. Getting their kid to camp is not worth it if it hurts your relationship with them. Respect them enough to let them to make the decision. After all, they are the parent, we’re not.
Part 4: Schedule Conflicts "I can't go to camp, I have to work this summer to pay for car insurance."
"My coach will bench me if I miss summer practice." "My family is going to the beach that week."
We've heard the excuses. These schedule conflicts are often the straws that break our backs. We've worked hard to overcome the obstacles of friends, money, and parents, but 'I'm about ready to give up.'
How To Navigate Schedule Conflicts
Publicize Your Summer Camp Dates ASAP Your area will find out summer camp dates in the fall. Consider sending out "Save The Date" postcards to everyone in your club card database. But don't just count on postcards and club announcements to do the trick. The most effective way to "save the date" is to go ahead and get kids signed up early.
Cast A Vision To a 16 year old, the idea of having your own set of wheels is the ultimate goal in life. If it means scooping ice cream all summer for minimum wage in order to pay for the car insurance, then so be it. A week at camp not only costs money, but limits summer income. We’ve got to convince our friends that years from now the $140 they would have made mixing strawberries with graham crackers won't compare to the value of memories and experience. Show them pics and videos from past summer camps. Show them pictures of your bridesmaids and groomsmen. Cast a vision for the bonding and relationships that happen on trips like these. Who knows, one day your friends who stood with you on top of 13,000 ft. mountain might stand beside you at an alter? Be Their Advocate Talk to their parents first and get them on board. Three weeks ago a leader on our team convinced a family to change their vacation dates so their son could come to camp. Listen to Bieber and 'Never Say Never.' Talk To Coaches Cast a vision for them as well. Many times their sole focus is on an athlete's performance, but we all know the value of having a team member with high character. Tell the coach that this trip might not make Big John a better football player, but it will make him a better leader. Most coaches really do care about kids, otherwise they wouldn't work countless hours for little pay. Explain that you don't want Big John to just be a great football player, but to be a great man. Convince him that a week away from summer practice will be worth it in the long run of Big John's life. It also doesn't hurt that many of our camp properties have work out facilities. If an athlete can keep running or lifting while they're out of town, it helps the coach give the green light. Talk to Bosses If you've ever managed a restaurant employee schedule, I salute you. I can't imagine a more annoying task then trying to fit the time off requests of fifty workers into one work schedule. Empathize with employers. Tell them you know that it makes their job harder when they lose an employee for a week. Then cast the same vision you did for the coach. Odds are they'll be a better employee when they come back from camp then they were before they left. Be gracious and grateful. Talk To Camp If you have a high schooler taking an online summer class, don't let that be an excuse. YL camps will work with you to make it possible for your high school friend to be there. Last summer the office staff at Sharptop allowed one of our guys to spend an hour on their computer every day after lunch. He would not have been able to come if the office staff hadn't been willing to make it work for him. Don't abuse them, but also don't be afraid to ask. Remember, property staff loves kids just as much as we do.
Part 5: Fear Of The Unknown Remember the first time you got on a school bus? I was excited, but nervous, wondering who I would sit beside. It ended up being a 1st grader named Shane who grossed me out. He sucked on and ate his Vaseline Lip Therapy. The whole tube. Seriously. I think that was the last time my folks made me ride a yellow bus. We all get nervous when we don't know what to expect. Heck, even visiting churches is scary, and people are supposed to be kind. Can you imagine being at the peak of adolescence? At the height of nervousness? And someone asking you to step out of your comfort zone to experience a week of 'the unknown.'
And on top of that, since we're supposed to keep things a secret, every time a kid asks a question we respond with "I could tell you, but I'd have to kill you."
How To Alleviate The Fear Of The Unknown
Acknowledge & Empathize Whether they admit it or not, their fear of the unknown is real. Let them know it's normal to be anxious. Tell them how you felt the first time you got on a camp bus. "I remember going to camp when I was a sophomore. I was so worried about who I would sit beside on the bus. I was nervous that if I had to use the bus bathroom the mean guys who always sit in the back would lock me in there. But it ended up being OK. I sat by this kid from another school and we actually became pretty good friends." When a 15 year old hears you say that, they gain confidence in knowing they're not alone. Tell Them What They're Thinking "I know you might be wondering what the bathroom situation is. Don't worry, there aren't any group showers, they actually have pretty nice individual shower stalls, and the TP is 2-‐ply!" "I know you might be worried about certain girls forming a clique and leaving you out, but camp is set up to where we do most everything all together. And I'll hang out with you the whole time, even if other girls are mean." "I know you are concerned about leaving your mom home alone all week. Since your dad is gone I know she depends on you to be the man of the house, but your mom wants you to go and experience this. If you don't, she'll feel guilty that you stayed home just for her sake." You know your middle and high school friends. Pray for them. Ask God to give you wisdom and discernment to understand the mental battles they might be internally fighting. Tell Them About Camp Show them a camp video. You can explain a typical day without ruining the surprises. They might think they're going to have to walk around in bathing suit all week, and that makes them self-‐conscious. Explain that afternoon free time is exactly that, time for them to freely choose what activity they want to do.
Explain that you are not going to ask them to do anything you're not willing to do yourself. Yes, that means we as leaders must conquer fears as well. I'm still scared of that pamper pole. Give Them A Taste Nick and Ray are two of my 'non-‐typical-‐Younglifey' friends. They don't wear Fratagonia. They don't like Taylor Swift. They don't sleep in enos. When the lax bros and cheer team signed up for camp, it didn't really motivate them to get in their deposits.
An exciting summer for Nick and Ray isn't spent at the pool. It's spent at the pool hall. The only thing they're raising money for are Marlboro Reds. I was about done with my exhausting efforts to convince them to go to camp. Just before I gave up, I made a phone call. "Hey [YL Property closest to us]. My name is Drew and I'm a YL leader in a town about 2.5 hours away. Is there any chance I can bring two of my high school friends up to camp tomorrow afternoon for free time, dinner, and club? We'll pay for dinner and leave property after club. Pretty please? I'm trying to convince them to spend a week at camp, but wanted to wet their appetite." "Well, camp is pretty full, but if it's just three of you and you're willing to eat work crew meal, come on." Our area was going to camp 3rd session at a different property, but Nick, Ray, and I took a day trip during 1st session to the property closest to us. It was much easier to convince them to pay $8 and give up a day than to pay $800 and give up a week. Do you think they wanted to sign up after they'd spent just 6 hours on a YL property? You guessed correctly. I know it's not possible for everyone to do, but if you can give them a taste, they'll be hungry for more. *Not all YL properties can accommodate such requests, so if you call, do so with hope, but without expectation. Drew Hill YoungLifeLeaders.org May 2012