With campers from 20 states and eight countries, Camp Pok-O-MacCready has been serving Willsboro and beyond for 119 years. The camp, ACA accredited since 1957, remains focused on helping campers create lifelong friendships while enjoying opportunities for growth and independence in the analog beauty of the Adirondacks.

CampBrain’s partnership with Pok-O-MacCready started two and a half years ago, allowing Director Brian DeGroat to check in with parents after the switch to get their opinion on the new registration system. He filled us in on their feedback below!

What is your favorite part of using CampBrain?

Brian: It’s a great question. I think my favorite part of using Camp Brain is coming into work in the morning, opening the browser, and just looking to see who else has registered for camp in the last 12 hours that I’ve not been at work or who has started a registration. It really gives a sense of momentum, or a lack of momentum. It is a clue as to how am I doing from a recruiting standpoint to see what registrations are coming through. I can ask parents where they’ve stalled in the registration process and they can tell me, then we can work through those problems. It’s just so nice to every morning have a check in, look at that screen, and know exactly how I’m doing as a recruiter and marketer.

How has CampBrain changed your business?

Brian: CampBrain has made our business more focused on families taking charge of the registration process, of being able to go to one stop shop for the health forms, for the financial aspects, and has really empowered them to not call me as much with questions. It allows me to focus on recruiting on doing more camper parent communications without having to have so many small things come to me because parents are figuring out for themselves.

What problem did CampBrain solve your organization?

Brian: I think the biggest problem it solved for us is making the registration process smoother and more immediate for parents allowing us to track in real time where our campers were registering in terms of their age groups, and also giving the parents a tool to see their finances, which wasn’t something that we had before. The automatic payment process was also really good.

What stood out about CampBrain when comparing us to other software providers?

Brian: I did use another software provider while I was at a different camp and someone else had set it up before me. I found it to be very complicated and complex from a user standpoint. We weren’t able to have as much functionality as CampBrain has been able to do. I think the look of CampBrain reports are very consistent and easy to read and I can show a year to year summary to our board and they instantly understand how it works and how it reads. I think in comparison to some other software that I’ve seen, CampBrain seems to be more consistent, more user friendly, and very easy to interpret and to figure out how to use.

How do you feel when you call client support?

Brian: Amazing. Calling client support is actually something that with a lot of other organizations, you’re like, oh man, I have to call client support. But with CampBrain, I know I’m gonna talk to a real person who really knows what they’re talking about. It’s gonna be an immediate answer on the phone. And for most problems, it’s like ‘Oh yeah, bing, bing, bing. We know what we’re doing. Here’s your solution’, and we’re done by the time the call is over. For the more complicated stuff, I know that they’re gonna get back to me in a pretty short time period and we’ll have a solution. Or we might have a bigger problem, which is okay, and then we’ll have a workaround. There’s never a ‘this doesn’t work’. It’s, ‘Hey, this might not work right now, but how can we get it to a point where it’s solving the problem for you?’

Tell me about the onboarding process.

Brian: I think the onboarding process was very smooth because you have a dedicated person who is talking you through giving you the one-on-one intention that you really need. Plus the videos that are already existing are so helpful that I can just give those videos to people that I’m bringing on who I’m trying to teach CampBrain to. They watch the videos and then they’ve got it. So I think the personal attention and the onboarding is the thing that really made the process easy for us.

What is your favorite report in CampBrain?

Brian: My favorite report is the financial report with Accounting Categories, because it does allow me to very easily show my board members and the finance folks how much money we’re bringing in and that makes them happy, and that makes me happy. It’s a really good tracker of where the money is coming in and what programs are popular. It’s very black and white and useful.

What do your parents think about the registration process?

Brian: Our parents are very grateful for this new registration process. I did a lot of polling and questioning of our parents after we put this in place. All of our returners were so much happier that this was smoother streamlined. Easy to access. Lots of positive feedback from the parents once we started using CampBrain.

Love your Software

Hear from other CampBrain customers and leaders in the camp world about why they chose CampBrain and love their software.