Get a Smart Start Now for Summer Camp 2016
| Written by
Doubleknot Support | 
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For some camps, summer has already ended and for others, the end of summer camp is finally in sight! Before the most recent camp season settles into memory, take a moment to talk with the administrative staff who handles registration and family communications to discuss ways to improve next year’s processes.
Revisit Your Pricing and Payment Structure
Do you need to change your rates for next year? To fill up the camp faster, do you want to offer early registration discounts, discounts for multiple sessions or special pricing for members or returning families? Both staff and families will appreciate a simplified structure that meets your organizational needs but is still easy to understand and apply. For next year, consider these Doubleknot features:- Automatic application of early registration discounts and late fees.
- Discounts for returning campers, multiple siblings or multiple sessions.
- Optional payment schedules with automatic billing reminders so your staff doesn’t have to run reports, manually calculate the balances due, create personal emails and follow up on late or missing payments.
Streamline Your Registration Process
Managing hundreds or thousands of camp registrations is a challenging task for administrators. And, signing kids up for camp online can be frustrating for parents. Doubleknot offers special features design to make registration easier:- Flexible forms. Whenever you can, gather information online instead of having parents mail, fax or email forms for each registrant. This saves staff time by minimizing data entry and making it easy to figure out which registrations are missing information. Forms can also be used to add optional costs (such as T-shirts and before- or after-care) to the final purchase. You can assign different forms to different registrant types so families only see the right forms for their registration, and even make a form mandatory so a registration can’t be submitted without completing the form.
- Automatic waitlists and capacity management. Nothing frustrates a parent more than learning that the camp their child wants is already full. Doubleknot can display availability for every camp session so families can see whether the camp they want is filling up quickly. And, after a camp reaches capacity, registrants can choose to join a waitlist. Doubleknot’s automatic waitlist management moves campers off the waitlist and into the program in the right order so your camps are always full and your camp families are all treated fairly. (Administrators can also override capacity if they need to.)
- Saved participant information. For families returning to your camp, it’s frustrating to have to re-enter all of the information for each child every year. After all, their names and birth dates haven’t changed since last year. With Doubleknot, logged-on visitors always have the option to add a participant that they’ve signed up in the past—clicking a link displays a list of everyone associated with the registration owner, and selecting a registrant fills the fields with the right information for that person.
Centralize Information
For families, getting ready for the first day of camp can be complicated. Is there a dress code? Should parents send snacks? Where will the kids check in? Even the most organized parents can lose track of printed materials. Be sure to put all of the information that parents need in a single location on your website that’s easy to find. Doubleknot’s Document Library feature is a good way to publish and share PDF, Excel, Word and other documents—you can even set an expiration date on documents so no one will accidentally link to a 2013 parent’s guide by following old links.Create and Communicate!
The most important way to keep parents and guardians happy is to provide clear, consistent communication. With Doubleknot, you can:- Send automatic confirmation emails and receipts
- Create and schedule billing reminders that can be customized for upcoming payments as well as missed payments (the reminder contains a link to log on and make payment)
- Develop, schedule and send general reminders, information and newsletters to any group. Doubleknot’s Communications Center has built-in support for addressing email to people who registered for any event or program you select.
- Use Doubleknot’s Photo Albums feature to share daily pictures from camp. To protect privacy, you can require that visitors have a logon for the right organization to see the pictures.
- Stay in touch with camp families through newsletters and planning information Next year, send early registration information to everyone who attended camp last summer. Communications Center makes it easy to schedule and send mail to any group of registrants as well as anyone who meets the criteria that you select.