Students dive into digital marketing project for summer camp

Grove City College graduate students and undergraduates raised over $13,000 this fall to help a Christian summer camp build a new pool.

The fundraising campaign for Camp Susque in Trout Run, Pa., was conducted by students taking classes in the College’s Graduate Studies Program and the Winklevoss School of Business. It was spearheaded by alumni MBA students Peter Swift ’07, who serves as director of Camp Susque, and graduate student team lead Juliet Harshbarger ’19. 

Swift and Harshbarger worked with undergraduates to conduct the digital marketing campaign to support the construction of a $1.2 million swimming pool for the Lycoming County camp. The “class project” was made possible by the close collaboration between the Graduate Studies Program and the business school, which share faculty.

The pool project is one of the largest in camp history, which dates back to 1947, and Swift said the fundraising effort has stretched the camp’s staff. “So, when we were offered the support of a digital marketing team from Grove City, we jumped on it,” he said.

Over the past eight weeks the students have raised more than $13,000 via email and social media marketing, far surpassing their initial goal of $2,000.

“The project had the opportunity for great success due to the combination between the undergrads’ social media savvy and new ideas and the grad students’ real-life team and project management experiences,” Harshbarger said.

The students collected stories from Camp Susque alumni about experiences in the old pool to share, and they raised awareness about the project through online advertising. They also created the "Pieces of the Past" campaign, a fundraising initiative inviting supporters to buy a piece of the old pool preserved in glass jars.

“It was amazing to see the (students) go from idea to execution in just a few days with some of their proposals, and while I am always concerned about our organization's branding and the way we communicate ourselves to the public, the team did an excellent job,” Swift said. “Seeing the business acumen from both the grad and the undergrad students literally helping to support a non-profit ministry is a perfect collaboration that benefitted Camp Susque and provided a unique opportunity for the students. This is almost like an entire internship fitted right into a class.”

Harshbarger said the Graduate Studies Program provides today’s students with opportunities that she didn’t have when she was an undergraduate, and “having a joint course where undergrad and graduate students work together towards a common goal is brilliant.”

“While the undergrad students are getting a small taste of real-life work expectations, the graduate students are learning how to manage the incoming workforce,” Harshbarger said. “As an aspiring leader and manager, the joint class offered valuable insights and opportunities for personal reflection, which overall, helped me identify key areas for growth and improvement in the way I will approach management in the future.”

The project provided undergraduates a “huge opportunity” to get a feel for working with a manager and to build their professional networks, she said.

“The undergraduate students taking this course have a huge head start on their peers … Without having to compete for a job or internship, the undergrads were able to work alongside industry professionals, who, if they liked the work produced, will be able to assist these undergrads in future internship and job opportunities,” Harshbarger said.

Swift served as team leader on a previous project that increased Camp Susque merchandise sales via “meme marketing.” It was something new for the camp and a learning experience for Swift.

“When one of the undergrads brought up the idea of meme-marketing, I was initially very hesitant, but using a focus group of camp staff, I realized that memes were a viable and useful way of humorously sticking out, and we blew away our sales goal for the entire semester in the first week of class,” he said.

“The memes were a big hit, and without the undergrad team, I never would have even considered it. We had a blast coming up with and publishing memes and we set new sales records for our camp store that semester,” Swift said.

Grove City College introduced its Graduate Studies Program in 2020 to augment the College’s ability to provide an excellent, Christ-centered education beyond the undergraduate level. A growing suite of graduate level programs includes the MBA program and master’s programs in Accounting, Business Analytics, Kinesiology, Economics, Theology, and Ministry.

For more about the pool project, visit susqe.org. For more about Graduate & Online programs at Grove City College, visit gcc.edu/gradprograms.

The team of Grove City College students working on the Camp Susque digital marketing campaign included, from left below, MBA students Luke Rios, Juliet Harshbarger ’19, and Peter Swift ’07, and undergraduates Ellie Gardner and Matheus Melo.

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