From a vulnerable donation form to confident, secure giving in Salesforce
For T1International, trust is everything. As a global diabetes advocacy organization led by people impacted by diabetes, every donation represents more than funding. It represents solidarity, community and shared experience.
With just three full-time staff members and two part-time team members and contractors, the organization operates lean. There is no large IT department and no dedicated fundraising team. When something breaks, it lands on the people already juggling fundraising, operations, and advocacy.
When a “low-cost” solution becomes expensive
To manage online donations, T1International had commissioned a custom-built form connected from Salesforce to Stripe and PayPal. At the time, it felt like the right decision. It was affordable, flexible, and allowed them to reflect both US dollars and British pounds when they still operated US and UK entities.
But about a year and a half after going live, at the yearend giving season, hackers discovered the form and it became so vulnerable that the team had to take the form offline.
“It was one of the most stressful winter holiday breaks I’ve spent,” says Allison Hardt, Community Development Director.
Online donations temporarily stopped. Staff time shifted from fundraising to crisis management. And because the form was custom-built, fixing the issue meant relying on the original developer. It became clear that continuing with a custom solution would require ongoing investment and technical maintenance.
The organization did not have in-house expertise to maintain or secure custom code. What once looked like a cost-saving decision had become a structural vulnerability.
“As a small organization, it’s sometimes hard to justify an investment when you technically have the capacity to do something,” Allison explains. “But the amount of staff time lost to having that breach made it much easier to make the case for a new and future-proof payments solution.”
Creating a stable payment foundation in Salesforce
T1International had been using Salesforce NPSP for years. They believed in centralizing donor relationships and building a holistic view of engagement. The Salesforce CRM was in place. The data strategy was clear. But the way donations were collected, relied on a custom-built form that had already proven vulnerable and had even been taken offline. For a small team dependent on consistent online giving, that simply wasn’t sustainable.
A board member who works at Salesforce and does pro-bono work for the T1International, had previously suggested FinDock. At the time, it felt out of reach. After the breach, it felt necessary.
Implementing FinDock brought payments fully inside Salesforce. More importantly, it shifted responsibility for maintaining and securing the payment infrastructure away from the small internal team.
“It is such an asset to know that FinDock owns and maintains the solution,” Allison says. “That the payment functionality is continuously updated and secured as part of the product, and that it’s not something we have to manage ourselves. We really feel confident that the donation form isn’t going to be compromised again. That provides a huge piece of mind.”
After years of working toward the best approach to online giving, their payment operations felt solid.
A foundation that supports the mission
The impact became clear in day-to-day fundraising work. As the organization’s one-person fundraising team, Allison manages grants, major donors, corporate fundraising, and campaign reporting. Before FinDock, campaign reporting required manual cleanup. Donations had to be reviewed and retroactively assigned to the correct Salesforce campaigns. Now, campaign-specific giving pages automatically connect each donation to the right campaign in Salesforce.
“When we’re doing a big campaign push, the fact that it’s linked in there definitely saves hours of my time,” Allison explains.
Instead of spending time correcting data, she can focus on strategy and donor engagement. Reporting is cleaner from the start. Campaign performance is clearer. Payment operations now support fundraising, rather than creating extra work.
At the same time, the organization improved its payment experiences. Dedicated pages for monthly donors and for in-memory or in-honor giving made it easier for supporters to give in a way that feels meaningful.
“We’ve had an increase in in-memory giving, and I think that’s because it’s easier for people to indicate that,” Allison says.
By removing friction on the front end and manual work on the back end, T1International strengthened both their donor experience and their internal operations.
Delivering Customer Payment Happiness
For an organization fighting for access to life-saving diabetes care worldwide, stability in payment operations might seem like a small detail. But when trust is everything, secure and seamless payment experiences are part of delivering real Customer Payment Happiness. And that makes all the difference.