Two AI Tools That Could Change How Your Camp Runs: Coda and Dialpad

Camp directors live in a world of institutional knowledge that lives in people's heads and phone calls that disappear the moment they end. The staff handbook from 2019 is somewhere in a shared drive. The parent who called last Tuesday to ask about medications said something important, and whoever took the call wrote it down somewhere. Maybe.

This week's tools take on two of the most persistent organizational challenges in camp: keeping everyone aligned on how things are done, and making sure important conversations don't evaporate the moment someone hangs up.

Coda AI

What It Does

Coda is a workspace tool that blends documents, spreadsheets, and simple apps into one place. You can write a staff handbook in Coda, attach a live schedule to it, build a checklist that updates across the whole team, and layer in automation so that when a task gets marked complete, the right person gets notified. The AI layer helps you draft, summarize, and pull information across your docs without having to dig through pages yourself.

The simplest way to think about it: Coda is what you get if a Word document and a spreadsheet had a child that actually knew how to talk to other software.

Pricing

Coda's pricing model is genuinely unusual, and that's a good thing for most camp organizations. You only pay for "Doc Makers," meaning the people who actually build and structure the documents. Everyone else on your team can read, edit, and contribute for free.

The free tier is available for individuals or small teams who want to test the platform. The Pro plan runs $10 per Doc Maker per month (billed annually), and the Team plan is $30 per Doc Maker per month. For most camps, you would probably have one or two people building the docs, with the rest of your team contributing as free editors. That math works out well. AI features are included starting at the Pro tier.

No dedicated nonprofit pricing, but the Maker Billing model naturally keeps costs low for teams where only a few people are building the system.

How a Camp Could Actually Use This

The most immediate use case is the living staff handbook. Most camps have some version of a handbook that was last updated three seasons ago and currently exists in a format no one can easily edit. Coda lets you build one that stays current because it's designed to be updated rather than archived.

A few specific applications worth thinking about:

Pre-season runsheets. You can build a master opening-week checklist in Coda and assign sections to department heads. Everyone works in the same document, progress is visible, and you're not reconciling three different spreadsheets the week before camp opens.

Incident documentation. A Coda form can capture incident reports in a consistent format, automatically log them to a table, and flag items that need follow-up. No more deciphering handwriting or hunting for a paper form.

Staff onboarding trackers. Build a doc that shows which new hires have completed CPR certification, submitted their health forms, and watched their training videos. The whole team can see where things stand without asking HR.

Pros and Cons

Coda is genuinely powerful, but that power comes with a learning curve. Reviews consistently note that it can take three to six months for a team to use it confidently. If you are not someone who enjoys building systems, you may find the setup phase frustrating. The mobile experience is also weaker than the desktop version, which matters at camp where everyone is walking around with a phone rather than sitting at a computer.

On the upside, once it is set up, it can consolidate several tools you are currently paying for separately. Some camps use Notion, Airtable, a shared Google Drive, and a project management tool simultaneously. Coda can replace most of that stack.

Best For

Camp directors who like building systems and have at least one staff member willing to invest time in the setup. If you have someone on your team who genuinely enjoys organizing information, this is a tool worth exploring. If everyone on your team resists administrative infrastructure, start somewhere simpler.

Dialpad

What It Does

Dialpad is an AI-powered business phone system. On the surface, it replaces your existing phone setup: calls, texts, video meetings, voicemail. Below the surface, it does something more interesting. Every call is transcribed in real time, and at the end of each call, Dialpad's AI generates a summary that captures the key points and action items. The summaries are searchable. You can filter call history by keyword, purpose, or speaker.

Dialpad built its own AI model, called DialpadGPT, trained on more than seven billion minutes of real business conversations. One feature that stands out for organizations with specialized vocabulary: a company dictionary that lets you teach the AI your specific terms. You can add words like "LIT" or "color war" or your specific program names so they transcribe correctly instead of appearing as garbled nonsense.

Pricing

Dialpad Connect, the core phone and meetings product, starts at $15 per user per month on the Standard plan (billed annually). The Pro plan runs $25 per user per month and adds 24/7 support and CRM integrations. There is no free tier, but a 14-day free trial is available.

One honest note on pricing: Dialpad has a reputation for gating useful features behind higher tiers and add-ons. International calling, some advanced AI features, and conference room lines cost extra. Read the fine print before committing, especially if you need features like toll-free numbers or extended international calling during foreign-exchange camper recruitment season.

How a Camp Could Actually Use This

The biggest win for camp is making parent phone calls searchable and actionable.

During registration season, your office might handle dozens of parent calls a day. Questions about dietary restrictions, medication protocols, financial aid, special accommodations. Right now, whoever takes those calls either takes notes or doesn't, and that information either gets filed correctly or disappears. With Dialpad, every call is automatically documented. A parent calls about their child's allergy on March 5th. In August, when you need to verify that conversation, it is in the system.

A few other scenarios worth considering:

Staff interviews. When you are interviewing 40 counselors in two weeks, Dialpad's AI summaries let you review what each candidate said without relying on notes you scrawled during the call.

Vendor and contractor communications. Agreements made over the phone stop being ambiguous when there is a transcript attached.

Off-season board and committee calls. The action items from every call are captured automatically, which helps with follow-through between meetings.

Pros and Cons

The AI transcription and call summaries are genuinely good and consistently get strong marks from users. The mobile app is solid, which matters for a camp context where your team is rarely at a desk. The learning curve is manageable, especially compared to something like Coda.

The main friction point is pricing transparency. The base plan looks affordable, but the features that make Dialpad most useful for a camp context, including advanced analytics and certain AI tools, often require upgrading. Budget carefully before signing an annual contract.

Best For

Camps with active office phone lines, particularly during registration season. If parent communication and staff coordination happen primarily over the phone, and if the lack of a searchable record of those conversations has ever caused a problem, this tool is worth a serious look.

Bottom Line

These two tools solve very different problems. Coda is about organizing everything your camp knows and making it accessible to your whole team in one place. Dialpad is about capturing what gets said on the phone and making sure it doesn't disappear. If your biggest pain point is institutional knowledge living in people's heads rather than in a shared system, start with Coda. If your biggest pain point is parent calls that lead to he-said-she-said situations or action items that never get followed up, Dialpad is the more immediate fix. Either way, both tools represent what good AI adoption actually looks like: not replacing the human work, but making sure the important details stop falling through the cracks.

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

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