Get Involved
Fostering CDW’s community goes beyond creating a positive Quaker-based culture during our summer months. We understand the value of an engaged Alumni network, and want to keep strong ties within our community. Most importantly, we want to be a community that you can rely on and come back to for all of your years. Check out some ways to continue your involvement below.
Events
Alumni BBQ & Softball Game
We host our annual Alumni BBQ every year on the Saturday before Mother’s Day. Alumni are invited to come to both parts of the day, or pick one. The day starts off with an Alumni softball game, with team t-shirts provided. Then we have a BBQ in the Main Area for everyone to congregate and spend time together while filling their bellies. Bring your family and friends too! We use the BBQ to connect with our alumni community in-person, and invite people onto the property to reminisce with camp as well as make new memories.
Donor Day
This Alumni event happens during the summer, when we have campers living on camp. It is a great opportunity to see camp in action, as you are invited to attend activities and free time along with current campers. There is also a BBQ lunch provided in the main area, where you can talk to other members of our community and interact with current staff and campers. It does not matter the size of your donations, anyone who has ever donated to camp is welcome with their family.
Giving Back
As an alumni of Camp Dark Waters, you know what an important part of life Camp Dark Waters is to a child. You understand the value of having the chance to run around barefoot, build new friendships, live, play, and learn together in our camp community. This is what we love to do. But we can’t do it all ourselves, we need your help. Below are some of the needs we have identified where you can help.
Volunteer Days
Every so often, camp needs a helping hand with a property project or larger undertaking. these days typically look like a “Spring Cleaning” day in the months before camp. In summer 2019, we hosted our largest Volunteer Day when camp suffered a severe flood during Staff Week. A few days later, 200 people from our community came to camp to get dirty and lend a helping hand. We could not have had camp up and running for 2nd Session without all of the support from our community on that day.
Service Projects
Do you have a specialized skill such as carpentry? Are you part of a school or group that needs to fulfill service hours? Here at camp there are many property based projects that can be done that are not-essential to camp function but are forms of involvement for our alumni. In addition to service projects that involve manual labor, we have had camp alumni come in to do summer programming-related projects for extracurricular credit for school. If you have any ideas on how your particular skills could be applied to a project at camp, or want to donate your time to a project at camp, please contact us with your ideas.
Summer Programming
We invite Alumni to come and be a part of our regular summer programming, no matter how many years they have been away at camp. What this would look like for an alumni would be leading a trip or an activity with a select group of campers. Examples of how alumnus have gotten involved in the past are teaching kids how to make blueberry jam, teaching kids how to wood turn on a lathe, and taking out canoe excursions. If you want to teach something fun to our campers, please contact us and we can see if we can make it possible to fit into our summer programming.
Donations & In-Kind Gifts
Donations are one of the most important revenue streams for our organization, so if you are unable to be involved in any of the ways described above we also appreciate monetary gifts. In addition to monetary donations, we also accept any type of In-kind gift or service. Do you have some useable art supplies laying around? Did your kids move from home and leave behind their sports equipment? Do you happen to have an extra, working car that you don’t need? Depending on the value of your donation, they can qualify for a tax write-off in the same way a monetary donation does. Lastly, if you work for a company that would like to donate a large physical gift to camp, we would love to hear from you. An example of this kind of gift would be someone from an outing company donating canoe paddles and lifejackets. If you have any ideas, we would love to hear from you.
Of course, you may also have other skills and resources we haven’t thought of yet. Have an idea of ways to help camp?
Please contact us and let us know how you would like to help.
(609) 654-8846
info@campdarkwaters.net