Case Study: Ramah Darom
Homecoming Season:
Ramah Darom returned to Campminder after six summers with a different platform
Camp Ramah Darom, an overnight camp in the North Georgia Mountains, just celebrated its 30th anniversary. It was founded with a vision of being a year-round destination for Jewish life in the Southeast. Its other claim to fame is that it was the 17th Campminder camp, making it one of our earliest adopters. In 2021, Ramah Darom left Campminder for a platform that promised a more holistic approach to camp management.
In theory this made sense, but in practice, it left the team without tools built for a camp like theirs. Scott Topal joined as CEO in 2024 from sister institution Camp Ramah in Wisconsin, a longtime Campminder customer, and knew exactly what was missing. After six summers away, Ramah Darom came back.
Too much of too little
Scott explains that the new platform was “trying to do too much” and ended up “failing to do anything really well for us.” Our camp team “felt the loss of a dedicated tool that was really custom built for the way our camp works.”
Medical, registration, and travel are all built into Campminder for camps like Ramah Darom. The team never stopped missing what they’d left behind. That full set of feature gap was felt by the camp’s year-round staff. Scott also knew that ease-of-use would be important for the seasonal team that has to learn quickly.
Tested and not bested
For Scott, the hardest part of the years away was the visibility gap. Campminder lets you build and run your own reports, and without that, running the organization got harder. He was constantly making excuses for the technology, to staff and families. Back with Campminder, Scott is candid that “no system is perfect.” What matters more is dependability.
The functionality works as expected, and the customer service is “always responsive and is always comprehensive and is always thoughtful.” The same goes for how the product holds up over time. Campminder’s functionality “has been thoroughly tested. It doesn’t randomly break and it has kept improving with time.”
Unbroken Records
Scott’s first call was to the Campminder sales team, who he worked with when Camp Ramah in Wisconsin signed up for the Professional Suite. Together, we spent several months working out what a return would look like, and the Campminder team were “patient and gracious.” His implementation manager was able to adjust to a team that had familiarity with some features, but was new to others.
Scott’s team was also able to access their previous database of Campminder records. The camp now has data going back to 2002, which Scott calls “a treasure trove for us.” It meant that they were truly coming back rather than starting from scratch.
Come back, kids
While Ramah Darom was away, Campminder kept moving forward. The camp returned to the Campanion app, facial recognition for photos, mobile e-letters, staff hiring tools, and an enrollment dashboard. Longtime staff who remember the early Campminder days came back to a system with improvements to make their experiences better.
Similarly, the switch back to Campminder hasn’t slowed early enrollment or confused families, as Scott feared. Instead, their early enrollment numbers are up. “Switching hasn’t been an impediment and if anything, it’s helped.”
Darom Comes Home
