How Can I Help?

Summer camping season may be over at Anokijig, but that doesn't mean Camp still doesn't need your help.  The question is often asked of us- "How can I help?" and there are many ways.  Donations are always accepted and can always be designated for a specific purpose, like funding camperships or helping out the ranch program.

Volunteers are always needed year-round for groups and weekends at Anokijig, as well as special events that take place outside Anokijig, like the Rotary Founders' Club Casino Nite.  Did you know Anokijig now has their own page for volunteers on Facebook?   be sure to check it out and if you can lend a hand on a weekend or during a special event, we'd appreciate the help.

Another way to help is by saying "thank you" to those who have helped us.  Thanking someone for their generosity and support of Anokijig can be as simple as stopping by their Facebook page, liking it and leaving a note on their wall that lets them know how much you appreciate what they've done for Anokijig.  The left side of Anokijig's main Facebook page features businesses and organizations that have helped Anokijig in some very significant ways.  Liking them on Facebook & thanking them on their wall let's them know that their generosity impacts real people in a positive way.

This fall, we will be starting up our "Thank you Thursday" campaign again on our Facebook page and asking our supporters to thank those who have helped Anokijig.  It may sound simple and it only costs a minute of your time, but it is meaningful and it does make a difference.  While we're at it, we want to thank you for your support of Anokijig! See, that felt good, didn't it?

Help Wanted!

When Camp Anokijig was put up for sale and it's future put in jeopardy, our supporters rallied to keep Anokijig open. They came to us offering time, treasure and talent and we did our best to utilize all of those resources to save Anokijig.

We are now several years removed from those days of uncertainty, but Anokijig still needs your help. The Racine Founders Rotary Club has been holding an annual Vegas Night fundraiser, which in recent years, has benefited Anokijig in very significant ways. The Founders Rotary Club believes in the programs Anokijig offers and they see the benefits we provide to children and families and we greatly appreciate their support.

However, the Founders Rotary Club dedicates a tremendous amount of resources to making this event a success and they do ask for assistance from the organizations who directly benefit from it. So we want to put the word out to all of our tremendous adult (18+) volunteers that we need your help to make this event a success. The event takes place in Racine at Festival Hall on March 5th and we would need volunteers between 6PM and 10PM.

The evening includes “funny money” casino games, a silent auction, a grand prize drawing, and a Texas Hold’em Tournament. We’ll need people to run games, deal cards, help with food, and many other positions. Don’t worry if you don’t know how to run a casino game, part of the program is to teach you.

If you are available for all or part of that time, come join Jim, Darin, Don, the Scotts, Lauren, Mary, and the rest of the Anokijig crew, as we have a great fun time raising money for Anokijig.

If you have always wanted to volunteer for camp but haven’t been able to make it up for an event, a weekend, or week, this is your chance to make a difference! If you are over 18 and would like to volunteer, please contact Anokijig at 1-800-741-6931, or email Darin at darinh@excel.net, and tell us that you’re “ALL IN.”

We hope to see you there. Keep thinking warm thoughts and remember, we're just 115 away from the start of summer camp!

Getting Tee'd Off For Kids

Do you like to golf? Do you want to help Anokijig? Have we got a deal for you!! Camp Anokijig has been chosen by the Sheboygan Jaycees as a beneficiary of their annual golf tournament!

We need to enter at least one foursome in the tournament, but wouldn’t it be great to have tons of Anokijig supporters enjoying a day on the links together? Besides a fun, four-person scramble format, you will have a chance to win bunches of fantastic hole and raffle prizes, even a BRAND NEW CAR!

Entry fee includes greens fees, golf cart, lunch, 2010 Golf Days souvenir and a golfer goodie bag. For more information, visit the Jaycees site- http://www.sheboyganjaycees.com/index.php?section=15

Can anyone say FORE!!?!!? Or make that four– rustle up four of your friends to join us on June 11th at the Town and Country Golf Course- W1945 County J in Sheboygan.

Please note, entries must be postmarked by May 22^nd. Since June 11th is a Friday and some of you live a distance away, lodging will be available at Camp Thursday and Friday night. Please contact Darin at darinh@excel.net to make arrangements.

If you are not a golfer, but would still like to help Anokijig, we are in need of volunteers to help on the course on the day of the event. Please contact Mary Krahn at marykrahn@excel.net to sign up. We look forward to seeing you on the links!

Camp Still Needs Saving

"Hey Jim, why is that www.savecamp.com decal still on your truck, I thought camp was saved already?" That's a question I get quite often and the simple answer is that Anokijig isn't saved just yet. While Anokijig's future looks a lot better than it did five years ago, we still have a long way to go.

One of the problems we face is that it's difficult to keep banging on the drum and sustain an ongoing sense of urgency to retire the debt incurred back in 2005 to "save" Camp Anokijig. Many of the pledges made by our fantastic supporters have now been satisfied, while other well-meaning folks just haven't been able to come through on their commitments for a variety of reasons, including the downturn in the economy.

As time continues to pass, the bullet Anokijig dodged begins to look larger and larger. When camp was originally put up for sale, the economy had not yet hit the skids. Contractors, developers and architects were all still eyeing up every piece of lakefront property they could find, whether it was currently for sale or not. Camps like Singing Hills seemed to be falling like dominoes and I've often wondered what fate would have befallen Anokijig, had the Friends of Anokijig not secured the loans necessary to outbid those developers? The best I can come up with is that the hilly terrain would've made it unsuitable for a traditional development and it probably would've ended up as a golf course.

With the way the economy headed south shortly after our sale was finalized, a developer probably would've had just enough money to tear down all our key buildings and build three holes of a golf course and a model home or condo, before going belly-up. That would've left the property available for a camp again, but no infrastructure to support it. The logs of Western Lodge and our other beautiful cabins would've been sold off. Large tracts of our woodland areas would've been clearcut for fairways. The boathouse would've been dismantled to make room for a putting green overlooking the lake. All the fencing for the horses would've been yanked out and the land re-surveyed for a project that would've never been completed.

Even if Anokijig were put up for sale one or two years later than it was, the financial climate during that span changed so much, it's possible we wouldn't have been able to secure the loans necessary to purchase Camp.

It's scary to even think about those possibilities and while they may seem like they are a million miles away from us today, we're not out of the woods yet. While I'm happy to report that Camp Anokijig's future looks strong and robust, there is no telling what the future will bring. Will the economy rebound or will it take another downturn? Will the financial crisis that hit the home housing market soon hit the commericial real estate market and affect Anokijig's loans? The future can be difficult to predict, but I know as good as we all feel about Anokijig's future, we'll all feel a lot better once our debt is finally retired for good. Only then will Anokijig's destiny truly be in our own hands and not tied to the success or failure of financial institutions or parent organizations.

Our staff is certainly doing their best to eliminate our debt by finding additional revenue streams (new campers) and new donors. In fact, we've hired a fantastic woman named Mary Krahn, who has done a wonderful job of reaching out to folks in the area and helping them learn all about the fantastic benefits Anokijig provides for thousands of children and families each year. Even though Anokijig's history goes all the way back to Ray Vance in 1926, most of that history didn't involve Anokijig asking anyone for help. Doing so now is a relatively-new concept for a camp that has been operationally-profitable for more than two decades in a row, but we are making progress.

In the past few years, Anokijig has for the first time received grants and donations from many fantastic organizations and companies, who had no previous history of giving (many of them are listed on the right-hand side of this blog). Their generosity has helped fill the financial gap created by expiring or unfufilled pledges. We've also witnessed an increase in our group rentals and several of our summer camp weeks still sell out and have waiting lists.

The future looks very bright for Anokijig, but not without your continued support. If you are able to renew a pledge or make a tax-deductible donation, please do so- https://www.anokijig.com/pledge.htm Even if you cannot share treasure with us, we still value you your time and talent. If you can volunteer at Anokijig or one of our off-site events, let us know- http://www.anokijig.com/volunteer.htm

Lastly, if you haven't been to Anokijig in a while, please come back and visit us. We'd love to catch up with you, show you how much Anokijig has changed and how much has stayed just the way you remembered it, whether you're 30 years old or a camper from the 1930s.

Thank You Marquette University!

We often talk about the massive amount of volunteer support Anokijig receives each year (more than 50,000 hours per year). We don't do this to brag, although we are very proud of the generosity of our supporters. We do this to thank our supporters and remind people that we need their help to make this place successful.

When people ask us how a "private camp" like Anokijig can afford to charge half of what most private camps charge, the answer is simple- volunteers. Our legion of volunteers helps keep Anokijig affordable for summer campers, family campers and groups.

Today we welcomed a group of 32 volunteers from Marquette University, led by Dr. Toby Peters. Almost all of these volunteers were students and many of them will soon participate in another volunteer outreach program Marquette sponsors, which provides medical care to people in Honduras.

These volunteers jumped right into action at Anokijig, cutting burdock out of the pasture around Victory Hill, setting up a canopy for our upcoming Fallapalooza event and splitting wood down at the Supply Shed. The work was physically demanding, but these great volunteers were up to the task. The consensus from our staff is that they are welcome back to help out anytime.

Thank you Marquette University for all your hard work at Camp Anokijig! If you have a group that would like to come volunteer at Anokijig for a half or full day, please give our camp office a call at 920-893-0782

Thank You Johnson Controls!

Did you know Camp Anokijig benefits from over 50,000 volunteer hours each year? That staggering number happens for several reasons. We have an outstanding core group of adult volunteers, who seem to spend nearly every free moment they have at Anokijig. We also have a fantastic group of junior staff, many of whom volunteer countless weekends at Anokijig in the Spring and Fall months.

Another group of people that help us tremendously are companies and service organizations, who organize work days at Anokijig. Today, ten employees and executives from Johnson Controls and their Optima Batteries Division spent the day doing various work projects at Anokijig.


The weather didn't look good in the morning, but this group showed up early, worked hard and stayed late. Our staff is used to the rigors of working at Anokijig and they don't impress easily, but they were surprised at the effort put forth by the folks from JCI.

This was Johnson Control's first work day at Anokijig and sometimes we schedule easier tasks for first-time groups, but that wasn't the case today. In the morning, half the group cleaned saddles down at the corral, while the other group split logs down by the supply shed.


After lunch, the group enjoyed a tour around Little Elkhart on the Allegheney, before returning to work. The first order of business was upgrading all of the batteries in our fleet of vehicles to Optimas.


As that task finished up, one group headed out to tear out old fence line, while the other made much-needed repairs to our horse shelters. We also had folks doing filing for us in the office, which will make Carol very happy when she returns from her vacation next week.


Volunteer work like this is the lifeblood of Anokijig and its what keeps us accessible and affordable for so many children and families. Thank you Johnson Controls and Optima Batteries for all your hard work and generosity!