Paying for camp

Camp is a big expense. Our bishop feels half of camp costs should come from the youth budget and half from the parents. He didn’t want to do a fundraiser but was talked into it.

The young women think the fundraiser should reduce the budget liability but the bishop thinks the fundraiser should reduce the families liability.

I can’t seem to find anything in the handbook that clarifies this. Any thoughts?

Take a look at Handbook 20.6.2

It looks to me that the order of funding is Budget, participants, fundraiser. It would appear the fundraiser should only raise enough to cover what the other sources are unable to cover. Which is tricky as the other sources do not have a clear limit.

The GHB section russellhltn references, also states that the camp expenses should not be excessive (a wonderfully vague term!). If you find that financing camp is an obstacle or is causing conflict, it may be that the specifics of the camp experience need to be reviewed. There are many wonderful aspects to camp that after further review, can be reduced or replaced with similar-yet-less-expensive alternatives. Just because ward families "can" provide 50% of the cost, doesn't necessarily mean they "should", and just because a ward "can" have a fundraiser that generates a lot of money, doesn't necessarily mean they "should". There will likely be resistance to changing what camp looks like, and it's not always applicable to each situation. But it's probably important to have this review, and then if everyone agrees that the current camp experience should continue, then the financing can be addressed.

It's been my observation that there's a tendency for an annual activity to somehow be bigger/better/grander than the last. If allowed, this can lead to an excessively expensive event.

I'm sure there's a "keeping up with other wards" tendency as well.