Bringing Digital Transformation to a 20 Year-Old Summer Camp for Boys

About the Project

For 20 years St. John Bosco Camps (SJBC) facilitated Summer camps for boys under the umbrella of a larger organization (The Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter).

Recently, SJBC decided to establish their own brand. Migrating to a new organizational structure necessitated establishing a unique digital identity and digital presence. Additionally, SJBC needed operational technology infrastructure to support the growth and maturation of their camps.

Customer Challenges & Goals

Branding and Web Presence

St. John Bosco Camps has a strong base of returning and referring camper parents, but their brand identity and web presence needed a complete revamp in light of the new organizational structure and the out-of-date design. The brand needed to be similar enough in over-arching style to evoke the same cultural ethos and trust that their previous parent organization had garnered of their camper parents, but it also needed to be distinct enough to make clear that they were now their own, separate organization.

Operational Technology

• Application Management: The client’s application management process was non-standardized and out-of-date, making it difficult to track the application status, history, and payments of their campers. They had previously relied on mailed-in signatures for their various waivers, and instead needed a secure and reliable digital means of automating the distribution of the applications and the collection of those signatures.
• CRM: Besides the application needs, the client was lacking a proper CRM solution integrated with the other parts the process.
• Payment Processing: The client lacked a way processing payments online, and therefore had to rely on mailed-in checks
• Cost Constraints: Because it was a small non-profit, the consulting costs and the management costs needed to be as lean as possible.

Solution Details

Branding & Web Presence

Our design team found inspiration in the rich visual culture of the client’s parent organization. Through our iterative process, we landed on a visual identity anchored in that tradition—yet nimble enough to thrive across today’s digital platforms.

The web presence was initially delivered as a Jekyll-based static website on AWS S3 and Cloudfront to reduce both the up-front build costs and the on-going costs related to site hosting infrastructure and maintenance.

We then implemented an upgrade to a CMS-driven website via Strapi & Next.js to allow the SJBC digital team to expand their web content types, publishing frequency, and publishing autonomy as the organization grows.

Operational Technology

Below is a basic diagram of the flow of the application acceptance process through the various systems defined in the solution architecture.

• Application Management: We integrated PandaDoc with Salesforce, and did custom configuration and integrations to trigger various processes based off of updates to the applicants in Salesforce. This allowed our client to monitor application progress and simplified and automated the application acceptance process.
• CRM: We wanted to deliver the best future-ready CRM solution at the best cost today, so we focused on getting the client accepted to the Salesforce Foundation’s Non-Profit Starter Pack (NPSP). This strategic approach to identifying and implementing a technology solution allowed our client to meet the cost constraint without sacrificing CRM capabilities.
• Payment Processing: We integrated with the e-signature solution, PandaDoc, to let us quickly and easily collect payments from users. We then integrated Stripe with the CRM solution, Salesforce, for payment tracking and attribution
• Cost Constraints: Our approach focused on efficiency both while building the solution build process and accounting for the future fees related to platform costs and site maintenance. Utilizing Salesforce Foundation’s Non-Profit Starter Pack (NPSP) was especially beneficial with regard to the saving money long term.

Customer Success

SJBC has standardized digital operations with best-in-class technologies at their disposal, as well as a clean and recognizable brand. They are now receiving and processing applications more efficiently.

By moving SJBC into Salesforce, via our help applying for the Non-Profit Success Pack (NPSP) their team is now able support additional functions in the same CRM, such as high-dollar fundraising, without needing to pay for a new CRM or additional user licenses.

As a result, SJBC is able to focus less on the tech and more on what matters most: helping “young people and others grow in faith and virtue while experiencing God’s grandeur in creation.”