Why This Major Funder Wants to Send More Kids to Summer Camp

Summer camp is the highlight of the year for many kids — sun-splashed days surrounded by trees and water and new friends for life; a safe, activity-filled home away from home. But summer camp is not an experience every kid gets to enjoy.

Camp Fire aims to provide many more children with a summer camp experience, and a six-year investment from Margaret A. Cargill Philanthropies is helping the organization do just that. The commitment has enabled Camp Fire to remove barriers and expand summer camp opportunities for a diverse population of young people.

“Camp Fire is at the forefront of this work — it is one of the leading camp organizations that is increasing access for populations that have historically been excluded,” said Yer Lor, program officer, Quality of Life at MACP. “That focus has been motivating for other peers in the sector to move forward in that work, as well. Their approach is in alignment with Margaret Cargill Philanthropies’ goal to create access and inclusion for all youth from all walks of life, to experience enrichment opportunities that will build character and community.”

Established in 1910 as Camp Fire Girls, Camp Fire has been co-ed since the mid-1970s and now has 1,300 program sites across the country, including school and afterschool programs. A number of those sites are specialty camps for children and youth “with diffeent abilities, backgrounds and financial resources,” according to the website. Specialty camps serve, for example, children on the spectrum, young people who’ve lost a loved one, LGBTQ2S+ young people, refugees and children of refugees, young people with disabilities, and children impacted by the criminal justice system.

“We've taken our statement of inclusion and our values and have continued to adapt that to meet the needs of young people where they are today,” said Camp Fire President Shawna Rosenzweig. “Camp Fire is for young people of all genders and all backgrounds. It’s a place where we can support them to thrive, to feel a sense of connection to the outdoors, to others and to themselves.”

For Cargill, the funding is part of a unique portfolio backing youth camping and swimming, just one among a diverse spread of interests for this huge funder that likes to target overlooked causes. Margaret Anne Cargill was the granddaughter of W.W. Cargill, who built the Cargill agricultural conglomerate. MACP is the largest philanthropy in its home state of Minnesota, and one of the largest in the U.S., with assets of $3.3 billion in 2022. The environment is its largest program area according to Candid, but it also supports an array of other causes such as animal welfare, disaster relief and recovery, teachers and students, arts and culture and quality of life — which includes youth camping and swimming. MACP also supports Girl Scouts USA, the YMCA and other major camping organizations, but Camp Fire’s intentional focus on inclusion makes it a particularly good fit.

Pure philanthropy

Summer camp is a funding area that doesn’t receive a lot of attention from national funders; many camps rely on donations from local and regional foundations. The Wallace Foundation is an exception; support for afterschool programs and summer learning are a major component of its K-12 strategy. This dearth of funding is one of the reasons MACP stepped in to support summer camps, according to Erin Bowley, program director, Quality of Life at MACP.

“One of the leading areas of emphasis for the entire philanthropy is focusing on low-attention areas, things that are overlooked by other funders,” Bowley said.

But the primary reason for that support has to do with Margaret Cargill herself. Cargill, who died in 2006, always enjoyed spending time in the natural world and wanted to make that experience possible for all young people, according to Bowley.

Margaret Anne Cargill was one of eight heirs to the Cargill fortune. She was an artist and jeweler who lived quietly in Southern California for most of her life. She gave away millions of dollars to causes including the American Red Cross and the Nature Conservancy — always anonymously.

"I think it's one of the most remarkable examples of pure philanthropy I've encountered," Bruce Karstadt, CEO of Cargill grantee, the American Swedish Institute in Minneapolis, once told the St. Paul Pioneer Press, according to Cargill’s obituary in the Washington Post.

Margaret A. Cargill Philanthropies was established after Cargill’s death; it is the umbrella organization for her philanthropy. The Akaloa Resource Foundation and the Anne Ray Charitable Trust are included under that umbrella. (See IP’s primer on Cargill’s philanthropic entities.)

Like its founder, Margaret A. Cargill Philanthropies has always kept a low profile, particularly for a foundation with such bountiful resources. Last year, when MACP named Heather Kukla as CEO, she told the Star Tribune that she plans to introduce more transparency — while maintaining Margaret Cargill’s self-effacing approach to giving.

"Being transparent about our process is one of those things that we're definitely working on,” Kukla told the Star Tribune; Nevertheless, she said, MACP prefers to keep the attention on the grantees. "We don't really need the recognition for recognition's sake."

Erin Bowley didn’t specify exactly how much MACP has given Camp Fire in its two three-year rounds of support, but indicated that most of its grants are over $1 million. “We tend to make large gifts to partners that we really trust and respect deeply,” she said.

Swimming, s’mores and community

MACP’s Yer Lor considers the funder’s support for Camp Fire more important than ever, given the many challenges confronting young people today.

“We know that young people are facing multifaceted problems — from the youth mental health crisis to a global climate crisis,” she said. While many young people have mental health challenges, Vivek Murthy, the U.S. Surgeon General, has pointed out that minority and marginalized young people are at particular risk.

Summer camp can make a difference, Lor said. “Research has shown that camps help young people develop a sense of self identity and community, promote social-emotional learning, and encourage discoveries through intentional programmatic opportunities with compassionate and caring adults.”

With MACP’s support, Camp Fire has worked to improve the summer camp experience for all campers. “What we've been able to do with that support is to make our properties more physically accessible,” said Shawna Rosenzweig. “There have been actual campsite improvements so the sites are all ADA compliant. We’ve also introduced a number of trainings and tools to support the mental, emotional and social health of our campers.”

That includes a new role called an “inclusion specialist,” who works with the entire camp team, family members and caregivers to get a sense of campers’ needs so they can be proactive about providing appropriate support. Camp Fire is also piloting a “digital empathy tool” that campers access at the start of the camp session; the tool informs staff how they can best support each young person while they are at camp.

At Camp Fire’s specialty camps, Rosenzweig points out, young people have the opportunity to be with other campers with similar identities and backgrounds — and also completely different ones. “In today's political climate, camp is one of the few places where young people get an opportunity to engage with people who are different,” she said. “At camp, young people may share an identity or an experience, but I think about two young people that attend, for example, the Camp Fire grief camp in Texas. It’s a camp for young people who have experienced the loss of a loved one, and it's also a chance to learn beyond their common ground. They've both lost a loved one but they may have different political views, or have grown up in drastically different environments. It's an opportunity to build positive community connections with folks whose lives are very different.”

Rosenzweig hopes that more philanthropies will see summer camp as a worthy funding area. “We're always looking to expand our partnership base, and to get more support to make sure that all young people feel a sense of belonging. We know from research that loneliness is as big a predictor of early death as factors like smoking and obesity. At Camp Fire, we're committed to ending the loneliness epidemic. We can't do that by ourselves; philanthropy makes it possible to do that.”

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