Greater Farallones Association – Donation Forms, Salesforce and the Click & Pledge Foundation
One of the best parts about not being in school is that you get to look over at your neighbor’s work, and it’s not cheating!
We caught up with Greater Farallones Association to hear some examples of how they’re using the Click & Pledge fundraising toolkit, and we hope all nonprofits can benefit from their expertise.
Greater Farallones Association has been a Click & Pledge customer since 2015. Their mission is to ensure the Greater Farallones and Cordell Bank National Marine Sanctuaries remain ecologically diverse and globally significant ocean environments. GFA’s vision is to sustain a healthy and resilient ocean through education, science and community involvement for the benefit of present and future generations. Its work helps to protect the wildlife and habitats of the Sanctuaries through the development of a diverse community of informed and active ocean stewards.
Our team got the privilege of documenting and celebrating this mission in a unique way in 2023 through the filmmaking work of our Click & Pledge Foundation. We selected GFA to be one of ten nonprofit participants of the Project Ocean initiative, where we filmed a short episode for them and incorporated their story in our feature documentary, Team Ocean, to be released in 2025.
We are grateful to have Greater Farallones Association as part of our family. Enjoy our latest conversation below:
1. How have you used Click & Pledge donation forms and campaigns in online fundraising?
We use Click & Pledge to build and customize our online donation forms, which we simply embed on select pages of our website (www.farallones.org). Throughout the year, and particularly during our annual donation appeal campaigns, this makes it easy to share the online forms widely in our e-newsletters and on social media, allowing our supporters to make donations conveniently and securely.
2. Which aspects of these tools have you found most useful and effective?
The Click & Pledge form builder allows us to customize each form for specific fundraising purposes, whether for a campaign to raise general year-end funds or for a program-specific effort. We have the option to add photos to make them more visually appealing, adjust for different giving levels, send automatic donation receipts, and connect each campaign to our internal system through SKUs. It’s an easy-to-use interface for our staff; and most importantly, makes it easy for donors to make online gifts in support of our work.
3. Why is it useful for Greater Farallones Association to track donations?
As a nonprofit, we rely on the generosity of donors to sustain our work. Being able to track donations is not only essential for financial reporting purposes, but it helps us build connections with our donors to thank them and engage with them in different ways. Tracking donations helps us better understand our donors’ interests and passions, and it gives us insights into what our supporters care about the most. We are also able to leverage tracking information to improve our fundraising efforts, set informed goals, and allocate resources more efficiently.
4. What’s been your experience using Click & Pledge with Salesforce?
Being able to connect Click & Pledge with Salesforce has been hugely helpful to us. Through SKUs, we connect our Click & Pledge account directly with our Salesforce database. This is a huge time-saver, which is especially key for us small- to mid-sized nonprofits looking to create efficiency wherever we can! By simply adjusting the necessary settings in Click & Pledge, we’re able to have donation information automatically filtered into our database and set in a way that’s optimal for our unique tracking needs.
5. What was your favorite part about working with the Click & Pledge Foundation as part of its Project Ocean?
We loved working on Project Ocean with the Click & Pledge Foundation! The best part was being able to bring the crew (Bethany and Rod) out on a NOAA research vessel with us as part of our Kelp Restoration Project in partnership with NOAA’s Greater Farallones National Marine Sanctuary. You never know how a day at sea on California’s rugged north coast might fair, but thankfully we had a smooth ride up the coast to our kelp research site in Drake’s Bay. The day even included some humpback whale sightings for good measure! Bethany and Rod did a great job navigating the unique experience of accompanying a boat full of busy researchers among the wind and waves and all of the elements–with large fancy-looking cameras in hand, no less! They did a wonderful job capturing the day–and our Kelp Restoration Project–on film and we thank them for their efforts in creating this documentary.
A big thank you to Greater Farallones Association for taking time to answer these questions and help fellow nonprofits realize their full fundraising potential with Click & Pledge tools.
Check out the Click & Pledge Foundation’s Project Ocean episode (HERE) for Greater Farallones Association and learn how you can support their efforts to see flourishing kelp forests for generations to come!
