The MDA Camp that Wasn’t

It’s early August, and my Facebook memories are flooded with photos from MDA Camps from years gone by. It was always a fun time — even more so when I became an adult and would go on visitor’s day to see all my friends from years past. I love these photos. I treasure them. Those were the good MDA times.

But now, there’s a layer of sadness that veils them that’s impossible to wipe away.

Ever since finding out the Muscular Dystrophy Association gave the International Association of Fire Fighters over $6 million that was supposed to be used for research on neuromuscular diseases, things have never been the same. Clients still feel abandoned. Volunteers still feel heartbroken, Donors still feel misled.

MDA has been in a tailspin all this time, trying to save face. But here is what has happened in the two years since the news broke:

-They stopped funding research for nearly a year.

-They didn’t provide any support of any kind to their clients.

-They claimed they helped their clients during the Covid-19 crisis, when in fact they didn’t. They didn’t even contact their clients or do any type of outreach to see if they could help.

-They paid their outgoing CEO $850,000 for less than a year of “service.”

-They took out $10 million in PPP loans while furloughing their employees.

This year, MDA said they were bringing back in-person camp. They asked for donations and had companies raising money all year to send kids to camp — which, in reality, costs about $1,000 per camper. But other than research, this is the only thing MDA now funds.

Or, do they?

You see, MDA camps cannot run without volunteers. I personally know several people who had been MDA camp counselors for ten, twenty, and even thirty years. This was a tradition for them, a way to help kids with neuromuscular diseases have a week of fun and independence. These volunteers used their vacation time to help at camp. They were not paid to do this. They were not forced to do this. They did it because they loved it.

So, imagine signing your child up for camp, being told there will be volunteers there who are trained for their needs, seeing your child excited about going to camp…

And then, a few days before camp was supposed to start, getting an email that camp would probably not occur. Then, days later, finding out camp had indeed been cancelled.

Now, the emails say this was because of the impact of the pandemic. And no doubt, the pandemic has made things difficult for just about everyone. Every organization is having trouble finding volunteers, it seems.

But here’s what the emails from MDA didn’t say: former MDA camp counselors, who are already trained and known by MDA, who have already been screened, who many MDA families know already, were never asked to be counselors this year. They weren’t sent their usual counselor forms. There was no outreach to them whatsoever.

MDA said they tried so hard to get enough volunteers, but how hard did they really try if they didn’t contact a pool of people that had always been willing to help out?

Could it be they intentionally didn’t contact them, in hopes they WOULD have to cancel camp? If camp is cancelled and moved to virtual camp, you cut costs from around $1,000 per camper to approximately $50, if that, since MDA doesn’t pay for anything except a t-shirt for the child and some craft supplies.

Then where does the rest of that money go?

Let’s give them the benefit of the doubt. Let’s say it was just this camp — only one from the 24 listed on their site (not including virtual camps). Let’s say the others went off without a hitch, which is entirely possible. I haven’t heard anything to suggest otherwise.

But…I haven’t heard anything, period.

You see, camp always had a media day where local news crews would come out and film an hour of the kids fishing or riding horses or swimming. Firefighters would come with their trucks. Depending on which camp you went to, a NASCAR driver or another local sports figure may have shown up. Photos were relentlessly taken, all to be splashed all over the 6 o’clock news during their feel-good segments, newspapers, and, in later years, social media.

I have searched and searched and searched, and I cannot find a single photo anywhere online from a 2022 MDA camp. I can’t even find a news story or blurb.

If camps went on as planned, why isn’t MDA using that fact as a fundraising tool? It would be one of, if not THE BEST ways to show us something that donations are funding. Do they not realize this would actually be something positive they could do for their image?

But…did the rest go on as planned?

If you know of any MDA camps that actually occurred this year — or ones that were cancelled — I would love to know.

But without MDA being honest and upfront about what they’re doing with the money donated to the organization by well-meaning individuals and companies, we can only think the worst.