The profile of a non-profit educational camp for at-risk kids and how it learned to compete for corporate funding.
Running a nonprofit like Dave Hilliard's camp for at-risk children used to be a genteel, comfortably subsidized undertaking. Now, in an era of dwindling resources, it's a battle for survival. Here's how the Wyman Center learned to compete
January at most summer camps is a lonely month: the bunks are empty, the dining hall is boarded up, and the camp director, more often than not, is far away -- at his real job. But the Wyman Center, in the snow-dusted foothills of Eureka, Mo., is not like most summer camps, and Dave Hilliard is no ordinary summer-camp director.
Hilliard is Wyman's president and CEO, and he works year-round to live up to those titles. He speaks of customer service, relationship marketing, asset utilization, and "thinking out of the box," with the zeal of a fast-growth-company entrepreneur. Is such language incongruous for the director of a 97-year-old nonprofit camp for underprivileged kids? Hilliard doesn't think so. His job is to run Wyman like a business.
Make no mistake -- Hilliard is no corporate hotshot who suddenly found his true calling in the nonprofit world; he's been at Wyman's helm for 20 years. But 10 years ago it struck him that to keep the camp alive, he was going to need more than a big heart and an outstretched palm. Nearly 60% of all nonprofits nationwide have been founded since 1970, and their proliferation has intensified competition for both private donations and dwindling government funds. Hilliard and the social-service agencies with which Wyman does business rely on those resources to send poor kids to camp. In 1986 individual gifts and contributions from the United Way constituted more than 54% of Wyman's $567,000 in revenues; the balance consisted of program fees paid by agencies and schools, most of which rely on government money. Wyman's dependency on the public trough and on private philanthropy made Hilliard edgy. The United Way, which had, in other parts of the country, actually stopped funding camp tuition, was already grumbling that $300 to $400 for one child's two-week stay at Wyman was a bit pricey.
As nonprofits crowded the landscape, Hilliard knew, Wyman's customers -- parents, schools, benefactors, and social-service organizations -- would expect measurable results. Wyman's campers also were changing. With abusive parents, drug use, and gang involvement on the rise, the kids needed much more than two weeks of fun in the sun for Wyman to make a difference.
Hilliard knew Wyman had a problem. It served a single market -- at-risk inner-city kids -- with a single, outdated product: outdoor recreation. "We had all our eggs in one basket," says Hilliard. "But we had a gut-level feeling that Camp Wyman could be more than it was." His challenge was to grow and diversify it without forfeiting the camp's mission to "design and deliver programs that offer solutions to kids at risk."
What Hilliard achieved from 1990 to 1994 might well be a model for his peers not only in the nonprofit community but in the for-profit world as well. Wyman's client count is up 38%, contributions have increased 36%, and earned revenues have skyrocketed, growing by 152%.
And all Hilliard had to do was figure out what business he was really in -- one step at a time.
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Listening to Customers
Back in 1986 Hilliard had only a small staff of five, but he has always had the support of an extremely active board of directors. Like all nonprofits, Wyman has a board that's heavily involved in long-range planning and general policy. It was, in fact, longtime board member Isaac Young, a St. Louis lawyer, who nine years ago helped Hilliard plant the first seeds of Wyman's entrepreneurial transformation. "Businesses do five-year plans, look at markets, decide where they can be most effective, and assess their competition," says Young. "The members of the board felt those principles could be applied to a camp as well." Young encouraged Hilliard to sit down with his customers -- administrators at schools and social-service agencies -- to grill them until he had the market intelligence to make Wyman more responsive to their needs.
The customer list divided among them, Hilliard and his staff hit the road and, using their findings, "shuffled in the direction of incremental change." Every spring and fall since 1948 Wyman had been conducting outdoor educational programs for schoolchildren. Now Hilliard found that the school systems were more interested in the environment than in outdoor skills. Hilliard switched gears immediately. He quizzed leading curriculum-development specialists and combed the marketplace for materials to help his staff develop an environmental program. He settled on a package called Sunship Earth, designed to teach children seven core ecological concepts. "It was exciting for the kids because we integrated it into every aspect of the camp," says Hilliard. But the program, which included a franchise fee, was expensive to set up, and initially, Wyman had to absorb a hefty loss. "We were selling the same customer a different product. That was good because it added vitality to that relationship," says Hilliard. "But it didn't do much for the bottom line."
Hilliard figured he really needed more customers, but the camp had two critical handicaps: limited space and the seasonal nature of its core business.
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Identifying the Assets
As he would often do in the coming years, he turned for help to Wyman's list of contributors. Bill Maritz, president of an international marketing and motivation company, was well known for his commitment to community service, and in June 1988 he asked Doug Hartmann, one of his top executives, to sponsor a pro bono brainstorming session at Wyman. Hartmann, who had been a Wyman camper back in the early 1960s, led a team of Maritz and Wyman employees and an eclectic group of community members including a manufacturer's rep, an art director, a travel agent, and a lawyer.
"Wyman's thinking was 'We're a camp; if we build it, they will come," recalls Hartmann. "But it needed to utilize its resources better to serve the extended community. We talked about what we could do on- and off-site, and we started using terms like return on assets." Hilliard and his employees discovered that they weren't simply selling outdoor recreation. What distinguished Wyman from other camps was its staff's expertise in teaching children how to work in teams, to be leaders, to resolve conflicts, and to respect the environment. "The single most stunning idea that came of those sessions," says Hilliard, "was Camp Caravan. It was our first truly new product."
