While ChMeetings doesn’t have a dedicated camp management module, many churches in our community are successfully using the Events feature to handle camp organization, registration, and payment. Below is a guide that brings together best practices and platform capabilities to help your church efficiently organize and collect payments for summer camps. Here’s what we’ll be going through next:

1. Key Features
2. Setup Steps
3. Setup Demo
4. Payment Collection and Tracking
5. Need Help?

Key Features

• Simple or Detailed Registration.
• Multiple Ticket Types (e.g., Standard, VIP).
• Add-On Tickets to sell extra products or services (with Simple Registration).
• Tickets limits per registrant (with Simple Registration).
• Discounts and Promo Codes.
• Mandatory Registration Form to collect participant info (e.g., t-shirt size, allergies, emergency contacts).
• Guest Registration, so even visitors / non-members can register.
• Automatic contribution recording from camp payments.

Setup Steps

Here are the steps to take to effectively organize summer camps using ChMeetings’ Events module: 

1. Choose or configure your payment provider: Go to Settings > Integrations > Payment Provider to connect Stripe, Paystack, or PayPal. You can also set up an alternative PayPal account within the camp’s event records.
2. Create Weekly Camp Sessions as Separate Events:
   • Use a custom calendar to keep camp events organized together. You must create the calendar before starting to add the events.
   • Next, create multiple event records, each representing a week of camp (e.g., Week 1, Week 2, etc.). Set the event visibility to Member or Public as needed.
     
     
      
3. Prevent Duplicate Booking: ChMeetings provides an option to prevent double bookings, and to organize camps in such a way that would make your booking policy clearer to members. However, we recommend that you still communicate your booking policy for better clarity. Here is what to do in ChMeetings to prevent duplicate bookings:
   • One week per person: If you only allow one week bookings, then you can create one calendar for the entire camp, to which you assign all weekly sessions. On this calendar, you’ll need to limit registrations to prevent duplicate bookings. Enable the setting: Limit registration per person in this calendar and enter a number of days to define how many days must pass before someone can register for another event in the same calendar (e.g., restrict someone who chose Week 1 from registering for Week 2). You can enter enough days to allow the camp to end - e.g.: if the camp is 30 days away, then enter 31 days. You only need to enable this option on one event within the calendar.
     
     
      
   • Multiple weeks per person: If you allow the same person to book more than one week, we recommend organizing your camp sessions into separate calendars. Each calendar should contain the weeks / camp sessions you allow members to book together. There will be a separation between camp events, but this does not prevent people from booking weeks in other calendars. For example, one calendar could contain Week 1 and Week 2; while a second one would contain Week 3 and Week 4. If your camps entail different activities within each week, we recommend communicating this in event titles. 
     
     You can use Calendars to organize camps in other ways, too, according to your own preference. Just keep in mind that the Calendar acts as the container for your camp events, and when shared, it allows members to view the sessions the way you prefer them to be booked. In this scenario, clear communication is key, so we recommend letting members know your booking policy for each calendar you create - e.g. that they should book in one calendar, not the other. 
     
4. Enable Registration and choose between the two available types:
   • Simple registration lets you collect registrant data only while only collecting ticket counts for the participants they register.
   • Detailed registration lets you collect full information on all participants, not just the registrants.
5. Enable a Mandatory Registration Form if you need to collect more details from participants.

6. Choose whether you want to prevent cancellations or allow guests to register for the camp.

   

7. Turn on This Is A Paid Event, then add different ticket types as needed. If you use Simple Registration, you can also have add-on tickets to sell additional products and services right from within the camp events. As needed, set a ticket limit per registrant, to cap the maximum number of tickets one registrant can purchase. 
   
   
    
8. Select a Fund if you want contribution records to be automatically created for each event payment.
9. Configure payment options such as an Alternative PayPal Account, partial or later payments, as well as refunds.
   
   
    
10. Make sure to share the event or add it to your member portal so people find out about your camp faster and easier. You can also use the Send Push Notification feature to tell your community about your Summer Camp. Make sure to share the event record, not the form you require for registration.
    
    
     

For detailed configuration steps, please see our guide on Managing Event Registration and Payments. 

Setup Demo

Here is a quick demo of the event setup:

Payment Collection and Tracking

• Payments are processed via your connected providers (Stripe, Paystack, or PayPal).
• You can track who has paid vs. who hasn't, from under Events > Payments.
• Offline payments (cash/check/transfer) can easily be manually recorded, also from under Events > Payments, or from the People & Payments section of each event.
• Export the Event Registration Log Report, which includes event registration and payment data.

Need Help?

Reach out to our support team and we’d be happy to assist you in successfully setting up your summer camps.