camp registrations

Kelly Olson

We are thinking ahead to next summer and starting to plan camps. Wondering what software everyone is using for camp registrations? I know it can be done in Altru but we are interested to hear pros and cons from those of you using it. We would love to find a solution that also allows parents to register online and also allows camp staff to easily check campers in and out, communicate with parents, and manage all forms. And of course it would ideally integrate with Altru, so that we don't have to double enter constituents and revenue. Thanks!

Feel free to email me directly if you prefer at kelly@cmosc.org

Thank you.
Kelly Olson
Children's Museum of Sonoma County

Joe Killian

@Kelly Olson

In the past, we've used only Altru for summer camp registration. We have a fairly lengthy in-take form (including health questions, waivers, etc.). The biggest complaint we received from parents/guardians is that the summer camp would sell out WHILE they filled out the in-take form.

The second biggest complaint we'd receive from members is that logging into the Altru shopping cart to receive their discount was very clunky/hard to use (a complaint I fully agree with - the Altru shopping experience feels like it's stuck in 2006.)

We moved the in-take form (aka registration) to a third party survey platform (Qualtrics). After completing that form, the adult would then receive a purchase link. The Altru registration form would then ask a few simple identifier questions. 2024 was our first year using this hybrid approach and it went VERY smoothly from a registration stand-point. We still had login issues, but there's only so much we can do about that.

Kelly Olson

@Joe Killian

Thanks for the response. Couple of follow up questions ….

Did the Altru purchase link go out automatically once the in-take form was received or did you send manually? Also wondering if you use Social Good Software in any capacity to make camp registration more straight-forward? In particular I am wondering if you use a custom checkout flow and/or any automated emails?

Joe Killian

@Kelly Olson

The purchase links were sent automatically; Qualtrics has a built in feature to send an email upon completion. We could have also done a manual email-send, but didn't find it necessary.

We are SGS users. The “purchase link" was actually to an SGS Calendar with Altru purchase links enabled; we had a duplicate calendar live on ourwebsite, but with the purchase links disabled.

I used a very simple SGS check-out flow that replaces "registrant (pricetype)" with ‘Parent info’. For our org, we do NOT want any camper information (e.g. minor information) stored as constituent records, so we try to make it very clear we want Parent/Caregiver info. This helped cut down on duplicates quite a bit. (When we get a record for a minor, we merge it with the parent and make the kid's name an alias.)

One other modification I did on the Altru side was to modify the error message that occurs if you've already registered, to say something like ‘you’ve already registered one child, due to system limitations please complete this registration as ‘CHILD TWO LAST NAME'' and then we cleaned up the data on the back-end. This further helped reduce duplicates and make it very clear where minor data was leaking into constituent records.