Research
Research to Support ACA's National Accreditation Program: Request for Proposals
From accreditation and training to advocacy and crisis support, ACA works to help camps thrive and to ensure campers have safe, healthy, and enriching experiences. Our individual members — who today number 10,000+ — have been sharing knowledge and experience for more than 110 years, creating safer, higher-quality programs that collectively impact 7.2 million campers annually. But there is more to do.
There are more than 20,000 overnight and day camps in the United States, yet most are not currently accredited by ACA. We are seeking to better understand the process and outcomes of this program so we can expand engagement, remove barriers, and learn how we can help ensure more children, youth, and families have access to accredited camps.
To that end, ACA is launching a multifaceted research initiative to better understand ACA’s National Accreditation Program. Through this research initiative, we expect to:
- Understand if and how a cohort-based approach might strengthen and expand ACA’s accreditation program
- Understand if and how ACA’s accreditation program (traditional and cohort-based), strengthens disaster preparedness and response strategies among camps
- Better understand the opportunities and challenges to engaging in ACA’s accreditation program from the perspective of camp leaders
- Better understand the strengths, opportunities, and challenges of ACA’s accreditation program model based on a review of similar accreditation programs at other youth development and outdoor education organizations
This RFP invites qualified researchers (research firms, consultants, faculty, students, etc.) to propose a thoughtful, data-driven approach to help ACA staff and volunteer leaders in their effort to ensure every young person has access to an accredited camp experience. The target audience for this research is internal (staff and volunteer) stakeholders who will be using the recommendations generated through this research at key decision points between February 2026 and May 2027.
2022–2025 Promoting Character Through Counselors-In-Training Programs at Medical Specialty Camps
Over the course of three years, the American Camp Association collaborated with Abt Global and SeriousFun Children’s Network on a special project: Promoting Character Through Counselors-in-Training Programs at Medical Specialty Camps, made possible through the support from the John Templeton Foundation.
For more than a century, character development has been foundational to the camp experience, as each camp can offer a variety of opportunities to develop important character strengths and skills. Acknowledging the formative role camp plays in young people’s lives, there is an opportunity to understand character development from the perspective of medical specialty camps where campers use their character strengths and resilience to overcome adversity regularly. Further, focusing on counselor-in-training programs highlights the unique perspectives of adolescents and young adults living with disabilities and illnesses as they strived to “give back” to and become leaders in their camp communities. Building knowledge and understanding about the development of character (and specific character strengths) in resilient populations is an important contribution to the study of summer camps, as well as the greater youth development ecosystem.
This project engaged 12 medical specialty camps from around the world in a community of practice to create, disseminate, and implement new ideas, specifically about how to promote character in counselor-in-training programs in medical specialty camps. The community of practice participants and project partners collaboratively developed a character development framework and a tool kit designed to explain to camp practitioners how to elevate seven character strengths in their unique camp settings. These strengths were chosen by the community of practice members for their peers working at medical specialty camps, to prioritize character work that prioritizes the unique population of adolescents and young adults living with disabilities and illnesses.
Tool Kit
- Character Playbook for CIT Programs at Medical Specialty Camps
- Free Online Course — the course includes a character playbook, videos to exemplify activities for each character trait, and facilitation guides to accompany the relative activities.
