Parents Need Your School Now More Than Ever

by John Graden | May 19, 2020 | Offline Marketing & Sales

Early Summer Camp

Parents go to work but their kids are not going to school.

Though the economy is slowly reopening, parents face a real challenge because they are returning to work but have children that are not returning to school.

This leaves a supervision gap each day. Your school can fill that gap.

You can create and market an early Summer Camp to serve these families and inject some much-needed revenue into your school.

Summer Camps average $150 – $250 per WEEK per student.

Be very careful not to run the camp as a daycare unless you’re licensed as a daycare center. It’s a martial arts summer camp with two classes per day.

You can offer:

Martial Arts Training
Martial Arts Projects including action video scenes
Crazy Kicks, tricks, forms training, rubber weapons training
Team-Building, including performance games, fun with instructors, and team battles, contests, and challenges.
Martial Arts Leadership Development, including public speaking and life skills.
Anti-Bully Training
Anti-Abduction Training
Free Time, including reading, art projects and, G-rated movies
Padded Weapons and sparring drills
Off-Site Field Trips such as swimming, movies, bowling, and more.

Because of social distancing, space will be limited, so provide an incentive discount of $50 for early enrollment.

For instance, Summer Camp Weekly Fee: $200. Save $50 and pay only $150 if you enroll in May.

MATA has an extensive Summer Camp training program.

11 Hot Marketing Ideas for Martial Arts Summer Camps

by John Graden | May 18, 2019 | Offline Marketing & Sales

11 Hot Ideas to Market Your Martial Arts Summer Camp

Here are some tips to fill up your Summer Camp. 1. Register with all of the available local listings for Summer Camps. Here is one example 2. Create a Facebook page for your Summer Camp. Here is a good example: 3. Recruit local schools to help you market your summer camp. 4. Offer an early bird special. 5. Send an email to past attendees reminding them of the early bird specials. 6. Encourage past attendees to tell their friends. 7. Create a Facebook Event for your camp. 8. Create an EventBrite.com event for your camp. 9. Have a dedicated landing page or entire website for your summer camp. 10. Start to plan and recruit special guests, field trips, and classes that you can promote to the local media and on social media. 11. Create some promotional videos. Here is an example, but it may be a bit too much :0) What do you think?

Summer Camp Insurance

by John Graden | Apr 13, 2019 | Planning Your Martial Arts School

Martial Arts Summer Camp Insurance

It’s very important if you’re holding a summer camp, to reach out to your agent and make sure that your current insurance policy will cover the summer camp.

Your martial arts insurance agent needs to know how many students are going to come and how many hours of the day they are going to stay there.

If you are taking them off property, you need to tell your insurance company. Make sure your liability waiver states clearly that might be taken outside of the school walls.

Make sure the parents are signing off that they know their child is going to be off premises.

When you do have kids for summer camp, make sure to always have two adults in your group of kids. This is important for protecting yourself from sexual abuse or molestation claim.

If kids are changing clothes, make sure kids of the same age are in the dressing room, changing clothes, versus, kids that are significantly older.

Make sure that again you are aware of the need to protect the children and supervise the children at all times.

Also, make sure you’ve done background checks on any extra instructors that are going to be helping you out in the summer.

It’s very easy to perform background checks online these days. Check every volunteer over age 18 that are working with your kids, and that they haven’t had any priors for abusing children.

Keep a copy in your file that you did everything you could ahead of time to protect your students.

Many martial arts schools experience far more claims related to bodies of water than anything else. Most insurance policies do exclude communicable disease, so that’s something important to be made aware of in your waiver, that you’re telling the parents that the kids are going to be outside.

Your liability is that you are prepared to administer first aid and that you are prepared to get that child safely the care that they need.

Make sure your instructors have been trained in first aid and in CPR. Have an emergency plan if you’re taking kids off-site, how you are going to get them to the emergency room, if they fall and break something or if they get bitten by a snake, etc.

Make sure whatever pool or a body of water you bring them to, has expert lifeguards there, and are trained to administer CPR.

Summer camps can generate great revenue for your facility, expose new people to your facility, and get more students in the fall. Always be cautious and make sure you have spoken to your insurance carrier.

Write down all the activities that they are going to do and disclose that to the insurance carrier and the parents.

If you’re going to make thirty or forty thousand dollars over the course of a summer camp and there is going to be an additional premium for two or three hundred dollars, it’s worth it to make sure you have coverage, for all these things that you want to do with kids that aren’t familiar with your normal business.

Don’t take that liability on yourself. Communicate it to your insurance carrier and make sure they are covering you for those summer camps because they are an outstanding way to grow your business.

Summer camps are great for the kids, it’s great for the parents, it’s great for the business. Just do your homework ahead of time to know what you’re doing and communicate it to the parents and the insurance company.

Typical Summer Camp Revenue Streams

by John Graden | Apr 13, 2019 | Offline Marketing & Sales

Martial Arts Summer Camp Revenue Streams

There are many reasons to host a summer camp. Increased revenue is one of them.

Weekly tuition ($129 – $325 depending on your location)
Daily snacks (50 kids purchasing $2 in snacks is $100 a day)
Safety equipment ($100+)
Uniform ($40. Suggest 2 to make laundry easier)
Exams ($45 per belt. Kids typically will advance one belt in the summer)

A Typical Martial Arts Summer Camp Day

by John Graden | Apr 13, 2019 | Planning Your Martial Arts School

A Typical Martial Arts Summer Camp Day
Structure two classes per day each day with one class at 10:00 a.m. and the other to coincide with your after-school program from 4:00 pm to 5:00 pm. On field trip days, you may only want to do one class for a total of 8 classes instead of 10.

Kids start to arrive at 7:30 – 8 am.

9:00
They can spend that time in quiet activities until the program officially starts at 9:00 with a morning snack. They will have to bring a snack or purchase a snack. It’s against code in most areas to provide snacks. Kids help to clean up.

10 – 11 am
Board games and a short movie or TV show will fill the time until the first martial arts class of the day. This is a martial arts class just like your evening classes.

11 – noon
Martial arts class.

12 – 12:30
Lunch

12:30 – 1: 30
Downtime as kids watch a G-rated movie or play board games.

1:30-ish
Maybe a field trip or a guest comes in to teach and speak with the children. Local police and firefighters are great options. Amateur magicians looking for stage time can work as well. Get creative.

4 – 5 pm
Second martial arts class of the day.

5-6pm
Clean up and prepare to go home. Pick-up is between 5:00 and 6:00 with a late fee for anyone after 6:15 of $3.00 for every 15-minute block of time. During the summer, you will have late drop-offs and early pick-ups, because of the nature of summer camp.