Cal Poly Study Update: What Makes Retreat Centers Sustainable?
In partnership with a team of Cal Poly University students, the Retreat Center Collaboration is studying models for financial and programmatic sustainability at retreat centers. We’re halfway through an eight-month research and analysis project spearheaded by Alyza Jose, Jenna Vokolek, and Yumi Aguilar—a team of industrial and manufacturing engineering students. They bring a systems-based approach to this study, complemented by virtual interviews with retreat centers across the continent, in-depth data collection, and onsite visits to centers in California.
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The Cal Poly Team
From left to right: Ben Scott-Brandt (RCC Program Director) and the Cal Poly student team Jenna Vokolek, Alyza Jose, and Yumi Aguilar together at Commonweal in Bolinas, California.
The team is made up of three students and their project advisor:
Alyza Jose - 3rd year transfer student; Industrial Engineering
Jenna Vokolek (they/them) - 4th year student; Manufacturing Engineering
Yumi Aguilar (they/them) - 5th year student; Industrial Engineering
Dr. Tali Freed - Industrial Engineering professor, project advisor
The Study Basics
The team is four months into their eight-month study, and they recently completed an initial report, which can be read in full here.
The team is working with eight centers with a variety of religious and spiritual affiliations; with a focus on centers that offer overnight stays.
Retreat centers are part of “wellness tourism,” which is travel in pursuit of wellbeing:
Wellness tourism showed growth of 7.8% between 2012 and 2017
A drop of 11% in 2020 (due to the Covid pandemic)
In 2022-2023, there was a projected growth of 9.8% (Source: Global Wellness Institute)
What sets retreat centers apart from other forms of wellness tourism is a focus on spiritual growth, healing, and transformation.
Creating a Sustainable Cost Model
In order to create a sustainable cost model specifically for retreat centers, the team will:
Assess resources - A retreat center should optimize all of their available resources (space, staff, volunteers, programs, facilities, etc.) to fully deliver on the larger vision. An assessment helps a center to know what resources they have to put to use.
Evaluate performance - A retreat center’s output/value isn’t a tangible product. Retreat centers offer intangible benefits like relaxation and spiritual healing, so accurate financial analysis is complex. For non-profits, there are typically three points of view to evaluate performance:
Economics - minimizing the inputs in the system (resource consumption);
Efficiency - a balance between the use of resources and results (a balance between the inputs and outputs);
Effectiveness - a comparison of the outputs in the context of the objectives that are being sought out (in terms of the center’s mission).
Examine the triple bottom line - This is blended value accounting, which measures monetary, social, and economic output as well as the impact generated by retreat centers. Triple bottom line helps to compare the social and economic impact of decisions. The team isn’t just looking at the financial aspect, they’re looking at the overall impact of retreat centers. After all, retreat centers’ objective isn’t just to be sustainable, centers want to make a difference in people’s lives.
Explore cross-subsidization - Retreat centers may need to do some things that aren’t 100% in line with their mission in order to support the mission (e.g.: hosting corporate retreats).
Factor in other variables affecting the sustainability of retreat centers according to the 2022 RCC Survey.
The team is focused on financial feasibility for retreat center operations management. Or, more simply, they’re focused on keeping retreat center facilities maintained and running. They want to know which variables a retreat center needs to prioritize to be sustainable.
The Current State of Retreat Centers
Right now, retreat centers are facing a number of challenges:
Shortage of employees;
Changes in the market (the group of people to whom a center can offer their services);
Unknown costs (even with detailed data, it’s hard for a center’s financial team to see what’s contributing to the operating expenses);
There’s no current standard model for identifying true costs.
The chart above demonstrates factors affecting retreat centers’ bottom line—such as “resistance to the idea of profits,” “changes in the market/audience,” and “COVID-19.” (Click the image for more detail.)
Problem Statement
The problem our team is seeking to solve is a lack of infrastructure within RCC to develop pricing models and determine which amenities should be offered. The study will be composed of identifying the most influential variables that impact a retreat center’s financial performance and sustainability. The goal of this project is to help retreat centers in the RCC break-even or profit financially and develop a sustainable financial and programmatic model.
Performance Metrics
The team will determine whether or not the study is a success based on performance metrics. In an Industrial Engineering course of study, students use KPIs—Key Performance Indicators—to help the team determine if their work is meeting the needs of the client and if improvements are actually being made.
Client satisfaction - Are retreat leaders and the RCC happy with the tools given to them to make their centers sustainable (e.g.: the calculator tool)?
Financial status - Has the team helped centers generate revenue greater than or equal to expenses, allowing some money to be put aside for larger projects or unexpected hurdles?
Process improvement - Has time been saved for retreat centers, producing the same or better results? Has accuracy of planning increased due to decisions being data-driven?
Amount of loss - Has loss been minimized by finding areas of operation that are creating financial loss and creating ways to break even or finding other ways to cover the loss?
Current Data Analysis
Each center has its own very different cost model, so the team started off looking at very general, higher level costs—umbrella groups (payroll, food, housekeeping, etc.)—broader categories that would be applicable to most (if not all) centers.
Payroll contributes most to expenses, but is a necessary cost. Paying employees less is not an ideal solution, and with this study the team is hoping to find a way for retreat centers to be sustainable without affecting the payroll. So payroll will be excluded from the next steps of the analysis.
Outside of payroll, the most influential factors on revenue are programming, contributions, and rentals.
The team tried not to look too much at donations (since they vary widely). They focused more on comparing hard costs versus consistent income.
There are so many factors affecting retreat center costs that the team can’t control for all of them. They asked participants for information most representative of their current state, so that the study can be as relevant as possible.
The True Cost Calculator
The true cost calculator tool is a model for retreat centers to input their financial data. The tool will highlight the weak spots where a retreat center may be losing money. There are three potential levels of sophistication for this tool:
Manual calculator - This would be local software hosted on a computer. Centers would manually input data (food costs, etc.) into text boxes.
Benefits: There would be less opportunity for error because a human person would be inputting information from their own center.
Drawbacks: This process would take longer, and everything would have to be updated by hand for each run-through.
Semi-automatic - This option would also be local software hosted on a computer. The software would take in a file input (like Excel Workbook) and the template file would include common or high-level categories (e.g.: donation, contributions, payroll).
Benefits: Would require fewer inputs than the manual version, and would act as a data organizer and a calculator tool.
Drawbacks: Could potentially require a new form of data organization for each center. Individual centers may have different cost categories than the team anticipates.
Automatic - Each retreat center would be given a 9-digit identifier to customize the tool to their center and link them to their unique data. This option would automatically capture data through credit card transactions or bookings.
Benefits: Fast, streamlined, and centers would get optimal values with minimum human effort.
Drawbacks: The employee in charge would need to be comfortable with tech and debugging.
The team will choose between the manual, semi-automatic, and automatic calculator tools and make only one, using a data-based approach to decide which model to use. They hope to have a prototype for the calculator ready for the next Community Call in May.
Best Practices Manual
The best practices manual will go hand-in-hand with the calculator tool. Output from the calculator tool can be taken to the best practices manual for advice on how to address any shortfall. The manual will provide a way to analyze qualitative things at each center that might not be able to be expressed through numbers (e.g.: How do retreat centers maintain their values while also being sustainable? To answer this question, the team would look at your mission statements/values.)
Retreat centers are so diverse, however, that there may not be a one-size-fits-all model that all retreat centers can follow to ensure success. This is an issue the team will be looking at more closely in the coming stages of the study.
Community Responses
Community members expressed excitement over the first stages of the study, offering their own suggestions for refinement and improvement. Some expressed a desire for future studies that would more directly address staffing models as well.
I’m loving the energy—we’re finding ways to explore our options with creativity. We’re working together while recognizing our differences and our opportunities for collaboration.
Join the Discussion
Do you work at a retreat center? Would you like to connect with the RCC community for more insights and support? Find out about our upcoming events:
Join us on our next Community Call by subscribing to our mailing list:
RCC has also launched a private Facebook group for retreat center professionals to connect as peers, learn, share, collaborate, and socialize together. This space is for you and it’s open now!
Notes and Audio
Follow the link below to access PDFs, audio, and additional meeting notes.
