AI Tools for Camp Professionals: ClickUp AI and Pictory

If you run a camp, you know the off-season is when the real planning happens. Staff schedules, program development, marketing campaigns, parent communications. The to-do list never stops growing.

This week I'm looking at two AI tools that tackle different parts of that workload. ClickUp AI helps you manage projects and keep your team organized. Pictory turns your written content into videos without a film crew. Both are designed to save time, but they work in very different ways.

ClickUp AI: Your Project Management Brain

What it does: ClickUp is a project management platform (think Asana or Monday.com) with AI built directly into the workflow. The AI component, called ClickUp Brain, can write task descriptions, summarize long comment threads, answer questions about your projects, and even automate routine work.

Pricing:

• Free Forever: $0. Unlimited tasks and basic features, but no AI access.

• Unlimited: $7/user/month (billed annually). Full project management features, AI compatible.

• Business: $12/user/month (billed annually). Advanced reporting, dashboards, and permissions.

• ClickUp Brain (AI add-on): $9/user/month for standard features, $28/user/month for advanced automation and AI agents.

ClickUp offers discounts for nonprofits and educators. Contact their sales team for a custom quote.

Camp applications:

The AI shines during off-season planning. Imagine dumping all your notes from last summer's debrief into a doc and asking Brain to pull out the action items. Or having it draft a job description for your waterfront director based on bullet points you jotted down.

For directors managing multiple departments, the "Knowledge Manager" feature is useful. You can ask questions like "What's the status of our health forms project?" and get an answer pulled from tasks, comments, and docs across your workspace.

The automation features could handle recurring administrative work. New staff member added? Automatically create their onboarding task list. Deposit deadline approaching? Trigger a reminder sequence.

Pros:

• Generous free plan for testing

• AI understands context from your actual projects

• Replaces multiple tools (tasks, docs, chat, time tracking)

• Works on desktop and mobile

Cons:

• Learning curve is real. The platform is powerful but dense.

• AI add-on cost adds up quickly for larger teams

• Can feel like overkill for very small operations

Best for: Camp directors and operations managers who juggle complex projects with multiple team members and want one central system for everything.

Pictory: Turn Text Into Video

What it does: Pictory converts written content into videos using AI. Paste in a blog post, script, or article URL, and it generates a video with stock footage, captions, music, and AI voiceover. No editing skills required.

Pricing:

• Free trial: 3 video projects, up to 10 minutes each

• Standard: $19/month (annual) or $23/month. 30 videos per month, 60 minutes max per video.

• Premium: $39/month (annual) or $47/month. 60 videos per month, premium AI voices from ElevenLabs.

• Teams: $99/month (annual) or $119/month. 90 videos per month, 3 users, collaboration features.

All plans include access to millions of royalty-free stock videos and images from Getty and Storyblocks.

Camp applications:

Parent communication is an obvious use case. Take your weekly newsletter and turn it into a 2-minute video recap. Parents who won't read a wall of text might watch a quick video in the carpool line.

Recruitment is another opportunity. Convert your "Why Work at Camp" blog post into a video for Instagram or TikTok. The AI matches your text to relevant visuals automatically.

For training, you could turn your staff manual sections into video modules. New counselors can watch a video about emergency procedures instead of reading a 10-page document.

The video summarization feature is handy too. Record a long staff meeting, upload it, and Pictory pulls out the key moments as short clips you can share with people who missed it.

Pros:

• No video editing experience needed

• Fast turnaround (minutes, not hours)

• Good quality AI voices that sound natural

• Huge stock media library included

Cons:

• AI sometimes picks irrelevant stock footage (you'll need to swap clips manually)

• Less control than traditional editing software

• Monthly video limits can feel restrictive if you're creating a lot of content

Best for: Marketing directors and communications staff who need video content but don't have time or budget for traditional video production.

The Bottom Line

These tools solve different problems. ClickUp AI is about managing the work. Pictory is about creating content from the work you've already done.

If your off-season challenge is keeping projects organized and getting your team aligned, ClickUp is worth exploring. The free plan lets you test the core features before committing.

If your challenge is producing video content without a production budget, Pictory can turn your existing written materials into something shareable. The free trial gives you three projects to see if the output quality meets your standards.

Neither tool replaces human judgment. You'll still need to review ClickUp's AI-generated summaries and swap out Pictory's occasional mismatched footage. But both can save hours of work that you could spend on what actually matters: building a great camp experience.

About the Author

Matt Kaufman has spent 40 years in summer camp as a camper, counselor, and director, studying what makes people belong, grow, and thrive. He writes about intentional community, leadership, and the intersection of technology and human connection.

Connect with Matt:

• Instagram: @mattlovescamp

• LinkedIn: Matt Kaufman

• Website: ilove.camp

Books by Matt Kaufman:

• The Campfire Effect: How to Engineer Belonging in a Disconnected World (February 2026)

• The Summer Camp MBA: 50 Leadership Lessons from Camp to Career