The Hidden Reason Camp Donors Stop Giving

Jim Dempsey and Jason Galicinski of Fundraising Masterminds explain why camps raise more by building partners instead of chasing transactions, and how one vision dinner can start relationships that last for years.

Year-end goals have a way of sneaking up on camp directors. The total isn’t there yet, the dining hall roof needs work, and the donor list is mostly people who gave last December and haven’t heard much from camp since. So the plan looks a lot like last year’s: a letter, an email, maybe a banquet, and a hope that the same people come through again.

Most directors didn’t get into camp ministry to ask for money. Fundraising ends up as a second job competing with the work of running camp, and the ask can sound more like a favor than an invitation.

Jim Dempsey and Jason Galicinski think that’s the problem, and they’ve seen a lot of evidence for it. Jim spent 40 years in development at Cru, where he worked alongside founder Bill Bright, and he has personally led more than 2,500 vision dinners. Jason built FundEasy, event fundraising software that has served more than 4,000 ministries. Together they run Fundraising Masterminds, where they coach nonprofit leaders to move from fundraising to what they call friend raising.

Hosts Mark P. Fisher (Inspiring Growth) and Carl Lefever (Improve & Grow) usually talk about growth through camper enrollment and guest group rentals. This episode turns to a third growth engine: giving. Carl framed it plainly at the start. Camps use donations to cover operating costs, launch new programs and invest in their property, and Jim and Jason have helped thousands of ministries raise more by doing it differently.

Throughout this episode, they cover the difference between a transactional donor and a partner, why a leaky roof rarely inspires anyone, the simple question that turns a need into an opportunity, what happens at a vision dinner and after it, and what a camp director can still do for fundraising before December 31.

[Embed Podcast Episode Video Here]

Quick Camp Marketing Tip: Give Your Team a Goal to Own

Mark opened with a tip that he admitted was more about leadership than marketing.

Have you ever walked into a staff meeting excited about an idea to grow your camp, only to have someone say, “We tried that”, or, “That’s not how we do things around here”? You’re thinking about what’s possible, and your team is explaining why it won’t work.

Mark has been on the other side of that conversation. Years ago he managed a news talk radio station in Washington, DC. New owners came in with a list of ideas, and Mark told them the station had already done all of it. They thanked him for his time, and five days later he was out of a job.

Growing your camp, Mark said, takes people who are willing to grow with your camp. But before a leader decides the staff is the problem, he suggested asking a different question: have we given our team a goal to own, or just another task to finish?

He told a story from his years as president of Sandy Cove Christian Camp and Conference Center, on the headwaters of the Chesapeake Bay. He was trying to hire a young man named Stephen Weaver as program director. On a walk by the water, Stephen asked Mark to describe his leadership style before he said yes to the job. Mark pointed across the water and said, “Stephen, I’d like you to get to the other side by the end of Thursday. We have about a $1,000 budget. What do you recommend?”

Stephen liked that answer and took the job. After Mark stepped away from Sandy Cove in 2013 for health reasons, Stephen eventually became its president, and he still is today. The two of them are still friends.

“Give people a goal to own, not just a task to finish.”

— Mark P. Fisher

Mark used a client of his as the example: a camp that wants 10,000 campers next year. Here’s how he’d hand that goal to a team:

• Explain the goal and why it matters.
• Ask each person, “What could we do differently in your area to help us get there?”
• Listen to the ideas and choose something promising.
• Agree on a budget and set some boundaries.
• Decide how you’ll measure progress.

His shorthand for it: clear goals, shared ideas, small tests. When someone hesitates, it’s often because they assume the change is permanent. Remind them it isn’t. You’re testing it to see what works.

When people help build the plan, they have something invested in making it work, and the leader usually spends less time chasing and reminding. Regular check-ins keep everyone connected: What’s working? Where are you stuck? What do you need from me? Along the way, you’ll learn who needs support and who is ready to help find a way forward.

Carl said the tip made him think about his own team at Improve & Grow, and how often he hands people a task he has already decided on instead of a goal they can shape. Mark added one habit that changes the energy in the room: asking “What do you think?” before saying what he thinks.

His challenge for the week: invite your team to help solve one growth challenge.

Packed Bags, One Chord and a Lost Senior Bunk

Carl asked both guests how camp had shaped their lives. Jason offered a good story and a bad one, and Mark, naturally, asked for both.

Jason’s Two Weeks at Camp

The bad one came first. At 8 years old, Jason was dropped off for a two-week stay at a camp where he didn’t know anyone. His parents told him he was going to love it. He did not love it. By the time they came to visit at the start of week two, he had his bags packed and announced he was leaving. They told him he wasn’t.

Carl offered some grace: two weeks is a lot for a first camp experience at that age. And by the second week, Jason admitted he might have enjoyed it a little. He went back for two or three more summers, which says something.

The good story happened at that same camp. The camp ran games and activities during the day and a worship service or campfire at night, with speakers who challenged the campers. One night he felt convicted in a way he hadn’t before. He described it as one of the first times he sensed the Lord speaking directly to his heart. There was an altar call, and he remembered praying.

Around the same time, the guitar players on the worship team figured out he was musical. They showed him a few chords, really one chord he could slide up and down the neck, and then invited him to play worship with them that night. He told them he had just learned one chord. They told him he’d be fine and brought him on stage anyway.

He probably didn’t add much to the sound, Jason said. But they gave him a heart for worship. Today he leads worship at church and in Bible studies, and his kids are on the worship team. When he traces it back to the first moment that music drew him closer to God, it was at camp.

Mark summed up the story for camp leaders. Camp can be scary, and when you work through it, you can hear God because you’re in a different place.

“When someone invites you to do something you’ve never done before, it can ignite a lifetime of passion.”

— Mark P. Fisher

Jim’s Senior Bunk That Got Away

Jim grew up in the Chicago area and went to camp in the north woods of Wisconsin every summer from age 12 to 18, at several different camps.

The memory that stuck with him is one he still can’t decide is good or bad. At one camp, two sets of bunks in the main cabin were reserved for the seniors, and Jim spent years waiting to earn one. The summer before his senior year, his parents scheduled a family vacation at the last minute, and his camp dates moved. As a result, he got bumped. The rising senior ended up bunking with the freshmen and watching the seniors enjoy the prime spots.

Nobody believed he was old enough to be a senior. Everyone assumed it was his first year, and he got harassed “like nobody’s business.” When Carl guessed he must have learned some lessons in humility, Jim said Carl had no idea, and that the details would take too long.

Still, he loved camp. He remembered the campfires, the skit nights and the counselors who came alongside him, story after story.

From Sound Equipment to Software to Fundraising Masterminds

Carl asked how the two of them ended up working together.

A Registration Form That Became FundEasy

Jim told the first half. He had been consulting with ministries on fundraising when a cousin on the board of a biblical counseling center in the Chicago area asked him to help. The counseling center had a young staff member, not long out of Moody Bible Institute, who handled marketing and its radio broadcast. As often happens in small nonprofits, he did a little of everything, so when Jim started coaching the center on vision dinners, the young man helped him make the process run more efficiently.

At the time, Jim said, registration was done by hand on paper, and RSVPs came back in the mail. The young man suggested he could write a registration system on this new thing called a computer. His name was Jason Galicinski.

Jason picked up the story from his side. In high school he was sure of his path. He loved computers and programming, and everyone told him to study computer science. Then, on a 1995 mission trip to Brazil with Teen Missions International, he sensed God calling him to full-time ministry. He had no desire to be a pastor or preacher. The message he took from that trip was simpler: lay a strong foundation by knowing the Word. So instead of a computer science program, he went to Moody.

He took a lot of theology and got very into Greek for a while, because it was the closest thing to a programming language.

Through Moody’s practical ministry requirements, Jason tried street evangelism and nursing home visits, then gravitated toward Moody Radio because it was the most technical option on campus. That led to radio engineering work, and then to the counseling center, where he was the technical director carrying the sound equipment to Jim’s dinners.

Jim’s model depended on table hosts, friends inviting friends. Jason noticed all the paper invitations and mailed RSVPs and asked why guests couldn’t just register online. Jim said to try it. Jason built a little form, and that form became Ministry Sync, which eventually became FundEasy.

Jason said it felt like God had taken him full circle. He had set aside his plans for programming to build a foundation in Scripture, and then ended up accidentally starting a software company that served ministries.

When COVID shut down events in 2020, FundEasy took a hit along with everyone else. Jim and Jason started the Fundraising Masterminds podcast to keep useful ideas in front of people. When events came back, they turned that work into training. Today they coach about 400 ministries a year, in two classes of 200.

Why Jim’s Dinners Kept Raising More

Running FundEasy gave Jason an unusual view of the nonprofit world. The software company didn’t consult or tell anyone how to run an event. It supported whatever a ministry wanted to do: auctions, ticket sales, sponsorships, underwriting. As Jason put it, he was the guy trying to keep everyone happy.

Jim couldn’t resist a jab: believe it or not, some people don’t do events correctly.

What Jason noticed was a pattern in the numbers. The typical fundraising event in the system raised somewhere around $10,000 to $30,000. Every so often a big one came through, but it was an anomaly. Events run by people Jim had trained, including Cru events, consistently raised $100,000, $200,000, $300,000 or $400,000.

For a long time, Jason assumed Jim just had his own approach, the way everyone did, and maybe got lucky. Then, in a conversation with Jim a few years before the pandemic, he finally asked what friend raising actually meant. That conversation was a light-bulb moment. He realized most nonprofit fundraising focuses on transactions and on tactics for getting more out of people, while Jim’s approach was built on relationships, partners and a vision that motivates them.

He sees the same realization happen in their cohorts. Leaders resist it at first. Jason compared it to Neo waking up in The Matrix and asking where he is. But by the end, many of them have changed what they’re aiming for. They come in wanting $100,000, he said, and leave saying they don’t even care about the money, because they just gained 150 new people who love their ministry and want to partner with it.

Friend Raising Starts With the Donor’s Heart

Carl asked Jim to explain friend raising in a sentence or two before the conversation turned to camps.

The ATM Problem

Jim said the difference comes down to the connection you have with people. He described two kinds of relationships: transactional and transformational.

“A transactional relationship is what you have with an ATM.”

— Jim Dempsey

You need money, so you walk up to the ATM, take the money and walk away, and you don’t think about the ATM again until you need money. Jim said that’s how a lot of nonprofits run their fundraising. They go to someone when they need money, and once they get it, they’re done with that person until the next time. Car washes, cookie sales and bake sales all fit here.

A transformational relationship, in Jim’s terms, starts with the other person instead of your own needs. The question becomes: how can we help this partner, current or potential, accomplish what God has placed on their heart? If the camp helps them reach their goals, it reaches its own goals too. Both sides win together. Jim’s shorthand: “We win when they win.”

Carl said that made it click for him. When you connect people with what their hearts are already drawn to, the ask stops being a transaction and becomes an invitation into something they already feel called to do.

Jim agreed. Many ministries are trying to force a round peg into a square hole, pushing people to do something they don’t want to do. He looks for what he calls the intersection between the camp’s mission and the vision God has given the partner. That intersection, he said, is the sweet spot where it becomes easy to talk about partnering together.

A Wisconsin Camp Moves From Donors to Partners

Mark asked for a real example of a camp that made the shift.

Jim described a camp in southern Wisconsin that had spent years, really decades, focused on what it could do to raise money. It was trying everything. When Jim introduced the idea of a transformational relationship, the coin dropped. The camp started inviting people in and building relationships with them, starting with a caseload of current friends of the ministry.

Those people had always been thought of as donors. The camp began to treat them as partners who co-owned the mission. Jim said that changed how the camp viewed everyone who helped it. The goal stopped being getting into people’s pockets and became getting into their hearts.

Turning Needs Into Opportunities People Want to Join

Carl brought up something he had read from Jim: every organization has plenty of needs, but few have exciting opportunities.

Jim said that too often, when organizations market or sell something, they want people to buy into what they already believe. The real change, he said, comes from listening: hearing what the other person is interested in and helping them accomplish what God has put on their heart.

The Groundskeeper Who Had to Raise Support

Carl pushed for a camp example. How do you take bunks that need replacing, or a roof that needs to be redone, and turn that need into an opportunity?

Jim said camps often pick inanimate objects for their asks: a new sign out front, more bunks, a new cabin. What they don’t do is explain what those things will accomplish.

He remembered one camp where every staff member raised personal support, including the groundskeepers. Imagine asking a friend to support you so you can cut grass. That didn’t go over well.

So Jim helped them think about what the mowing accomplished. Lives were changed at that camp because people spent time in a godly environment where they felt God was right there with them. That couldn’t happen if the grass wasn’t cut and the cabins weren’t cared for. Once the camp started asking what a new sign, a new cabin or a new auditorium would accomplish, and focused on the end result of lives changed for Christ, everything turned around.

Ask “So That What?”

Jason connected this to the structure of their coaching program, the Perfect Vision Dinner. It runs in 21 weeks. The first half is logistics: booking a venue, recruiting table hosts and getting all the plates spinning. The second half is messaging: what the camp’s vision really is and how to present it.

A big part of that work is building what they call accelerators. Jason said camps usually have a great vision, but they state it too broadly. “We want to be the best camp in the area.” “We want to build out the property so we can serve 500 more kids.”

So the coaches keep asking, “So that what?” Why do you want to add 200 more kids? Because when people come, they’re impacted. How are they impacted? They hear the gospel. And after they hear the gospel? They go home. What happens after they get home? They get involved in their church. Their attitude changes.

The goal, Jason said, is to follow the cause and effect all the way to the end and connect the dots, so a cabin project becomes the impact that cabin will have on a life.

Carl tied this back to the difference between a transaction and a transformation. Camp leaders have done this work for a long time. They haven’t forgotten why they do it, but the why isn’t always at the front of their minds. Getting the logistics of a dinner right matters, but so does drawing out why the leader got involved in the first place and what God is calling the camp to do. That’s what the people sitting at the dinner tables will connect with.

Half Emotion, Half Logic

Jason added that people in camp ministry often forget how little outsiders know. Camp staff are motivated because they serve kids from broken homes and families who don’t go to church. They understand the problem camp solves. A local business owner focused on selling jeans, serving coffee or running a restaurant isn’t thinking about the kids from broken homes who are at camp this week.

That’s why the dinner leans on storytelling to show the problem the camp exists to address. Jason said a compelling dinner has to balance 50% emotion and 50% logic. Stories carry the emotional side. The logical side is the accelerators, the plan and the strategy that connect the vision to a result.

Jim added a principle they teach.

“People give to people justified by the cause.”

— Jim Dempsey

So the stories focus on one person, one camper. Follow that camper from arriving at camp knowing little about Jesus, to hearing the gospel, to going home and getting involved in church, and maybe to becoming a leader at church or school. One changed life is what the dinner centers on.

Accelerators: Sell the Sizzle

Carl asked for an example of an accelerator.

Jason said many organizations arrive with broad goals: build a hundred cabins, hire more people. Jim added that sometimes the goal is just to keep the doors open, which is too vague to excite anyone.

Jason said a common one sounds like this: we have a general fund of $200,000, and we need to raise $100,000 to pay our bills. Nobody gets excited about paying bills, he said, because everyone has bills. If I pay yours, can you pay mine? Carl added that the same goes for covering operating costs.

Instead, the coaches look at everything a camp does and ask which parts create the most impact. Maybe it’s an impact night, a winter retreat or a scholarship fund that brings kids to camp who couldn’t otherwise come. Then they ask what each one costs. An accelerator might be raising a specific amount to send a specific number of kids to summer camp on scholarship.

Jim described it as whatever takes a camp to the next level, from serving 500 campers to serving 1,000. That could be another cabin, an activity center or new counselors. He compared it to a charcoal grill. The coals burn fine on their own, but add lighter fluid and the whole thing catches.

Jason said Jim also talks about the steak. People bring in what amounts to a nice slab of meat. Then you put it on the grill and people start to hear the sizzle and smell it, and their mouths start watering. Jim’s version: sell the sizzle. Accelerators are the sizzle, the part that shows how the meat actually changes a life.

In the program, Jason said, they help camps clarify their big vision for the next three to five years, and then name three specific things for this year that would speed up their growth toward that vision if they got done.

Inside the Vision Dinner

Mark said he has several clients trying to raise millions of dollars over the next couple of years who are looking for the right mechanism. Before asking about the dinner, he told a story of his own.

A Story Instead of a Plea

When Mark became president of Sandy Cove, an older saint welcomed him and reminded him that part of his job was to raise money for the mission. Then that person handed him a small booklet: Henri Nouwen’s The Spirituality of Fundraising. Jim knew it well.

Reading it, Mark realized he didn’t want to ask for money like a pauper. (“Please, sir, may I have some more?”) He wanted to tell a story instead.

Here’s the kind of story he meant. A man from New Jersey came to a men’s retreat at Sandy Cove. He was, literally, a hitman. He planned to use the weekend at camp as his alibi while he set up a hit. On the first night, he heard a story from someone whose life was so similar to his own that it captured his attention. He didn’t go through with the hit that Saturday. Instead, he gave his life to a purpose much higher than himself.

Mark’s ask, then, was simple: if you want to help me find more people like that, please join us.

He said camps are too close to their own work. They talk about buildings and sewers. What donors want to hear is what happens when someone comes to camp and then leaves. Then he asked Jim for a quick summary of the vision dinner and what makes it different.

Specific Gifts, Specific Outcomes

Jim said several things set their process apart. Jason had already mentioned the table host strategy: friends inviting friends and opening new networks. Those matter, but Jim said the biggest difference is clarity.

The dinner moves a camp away from presenting a need, like getting out of the red or funding the budget, and toward presenting opportunities to partner in specific ways that will change individual lives. People want to give to something specific, Jim said. They think of it as an investment, and they want a return, the same way they would with stocks. With a camp, though, the return is eternal.

So they coach camps to spell out exactly what different gifts would do. Jim used $600, $1,200, $2,400, $24,000 and $50,000 as examples of gift levels, each tied to a clear, concrete example of what that money accomplishes. That kind of specificity, he said, really resonates with people.

What Happens After the First Dinner

Mark asked for numbers. “We like ROI,” he said.

Results From Camps and Ministries

Jason said they have worked with many Young Life camps. One that he had in mind was averaging about $18,000 at its dinner when it joined the program. After the program, it raised $113,000 in one night, and it has since held its third dinner and is higher still. Another organization went from $170,000 to $375,000.

Then there’s Camp Henry, a camp in Michigan that had never held a fundraiser. It had strategic partners and grants, but no event. The camp came in with a strong vision and raised $499,000 at its first dinner. Jason said that one blew them away.

Jim added an example from a camp in California that wasn’t about operating costs or programs. A ministry had a $2 million capital campaign that had been stuck in neutral at about $60,000 for a long time. Jim helped them finish it at $2 million. The dinner was the spark, he said, but it was only the start.

Win, Keep, Lift

Jason said that point is what most people miss. Everyone wants to know whether the dinner works, and they have plenty of data on that from more than 200 dinners every six months. But many leaders arrive focused on the money, and about halfway through the program, something changes.

“It’s actually not about the money. The money is actually secondary.”

— Jason Galicinski

What matters more, he said, are the relationships. Leaders start to see that everything Jim and Jason teach is about partners who understand the vision. When those people get excited, they lay the foundation for the next dinner and the one after that, because every partnership creates an opportunity for something to happen.

Jason compared it to farming. You don’t know exactly how the crop will turn out, but you do know that every seed you plant will produce something, usually more than you put in.

That’s why the dinner is the front door. Jim and Jason call their development framework win, keep and lift:

• Win: Gain new partners by casting the vision to new people at the dinner.
• Keep: Follow up with a three-year program that keeps those partners engaged.
• Lift: Partners lift themselves as they take ownership. They see that $1,000 lets them do one thing and $10,000 lets them do another, and they connect their giving to the change it makes possible.

At that point, Jason said, partners become an extension of your ministry, and that’s when growth really takes off.

A Fishing Friendship and a Million-Dollar Check

Jim asked Jason to walk through one example step by step: a Bible college in Tennessee.

The college had never really raised money. The most it had ever brought in from its earlier attempts was around $30,000 or $40,000. Its first dinner raised about $182,000, which Jason called a little above standard. The college then focused on building those relationships into partnerships, and some of those new partners became table hosts for the next dinner. The second dinner raised somewhere in the $300,000 range. By the third year, the total had reached $1.5 million.

The largest piece was a single $1 million check. The man who wrote it had first learned about the college at its first dinner. Afterward, the director connected with him, and the two started going fishing together and became good friends. Three years later, he wrote the check because they were friends and he could see the impact he could make.

Carl said it was a good reminder that the dinner is a long-term investment.

Year-End Giving in the Next 60 Days

Carl knew some listeners were already feeling the pressure. It was mid-October when they recorded, and a lot of directors had year-end goals that weren’t full yet. He asked what a camp director could do over the next 60 days.

Jim said the Fundraising Masterminds year-end plan has seven steps, and it starts with matching gifts. He walked through what that might look like for a camp:

• Line up lead gifts. Find a handful of people to provide matching money. Jim suggested a goal of $25,000, for example five people giving $5,000 each.
• Announce the match before Thanksgiving. Send an email and a letter to your list right before Thanksgiving, when people are getting into the giving mood, saying that a handful of friends will match gifts up to $25,000.
• Follow up personally. Call the people who received the letter or email, and in some cases visit them in person.
• Make Giving Tuesday special. Jim recommended a 3-to-1 match on Giving Tuesday and a 2-to-1 match for the rest of the year-end campaign. That gives people a reason to give on that particular day instead of any other.

Jason added a free resource: an eight-part Year-End Fundraising Training series from their podcast, collected in a YouTube playlist. Search “Fundraising Masterminds year end” on YouTube. He said it’s practical and goes into detail on exactly what to do.

For leaders who want more, Jason pointed to fundraisingmasterminds.net to learn about the Perfect Vision Dinner program, and to the Fundraising Masterminds podcast on YouTube and Spotify, which has more than 120 episodes on topics from leadership to hiring a development director.

Running Camp and Raising Money Aren’t Two Separate Jobs

Before closing, Mark asked the question he hears most often from executive directors: how do I split my time between running the camp and being the chief fundraiser?

Jim said development rests on three areas: public relations, recruitment and fundraising. All three run through a director’s roles and responsibilities, so they weave together. He suggested a director spend somewhere between 50% and 70%, and as much as 80%, of their time in those three areas. It all comes down to relationship building, he said, and seeing it that way helps a director set priorities.

Jason had a different answer. He told Mark he was asking the wrong question.

If a director feels torn between doing ministry and doing fundraising, Jason said, that’s a sign they’re thinking about fundraising as a transaction. Once you see development as ministry, and as building relationships, the line between the two disappears.

“I’m ministering to my campers, I’m ministering to my staff, and I’m ministering to my partners. And it’s all ministry.”

— Jason Galicinski

What This Means for Your Camp

Jim’s ATM picture is a useful test for any camp’s giving. If supporters mostly hear from you when you need something, they’re being treated like the machine, and the relationship only runs as long as the withdrawals keep working.

The shift Jim and Jason describe can start before any dinner is on the calendar. Before your next ask, try looking at it from the partner’s side. What has God put on this person’s heart? Where does it meet what your camp exists to do? Then take your list of needs, the roof, the bunks, the operating budget, and keep asking “so that what?” until you reach a camper’s story, then give people a specific way to be part of it.

And when a first gift comes in, plan the follow-up. The Tennessee college’s $1 million check came from a man who first heard about it at a dinner table, then spent three years fishing with the director.

You Can’t Minister to an Empty Bed

Mark closed by thanking the men and women in the trenches of camp ministry who are serving what he called an anxious generation, bringing young people out into creation and helping them reconnect with God and each other. The hosts want to help camps grow that mission and grow their funding, because, as Mark put it, you can’t minister to an empty bed.

To learn more about the Perfect Vision Dinner, visit Fundraising Masterminds, and search “Fundraising Masterminds year end” on YouTube for their free Year-End Fundraising Training. You can find the Fundraising Masterminds podcast on YouTube and Spotify. To find your own camp’s biggest growth opportunities, try the free Camp Growth Planner at GrowYourCampPodcast.com. And if this episode helped, like and subscribe, and share it with a camp leader who is thinking about fundraising this year.

Let’s grow camp together.