A more accessible donation journey, connected from Drupal to Salesforce
Mencap wanted to give supporters a more accessible and consistent way to donate online.
Its existing options were functional, but standard FinDock pages and Formstack limited how much control the charity had over the design and accessibility of the giving experience. Moving supporters between domains could also interrupt the journey and reduce confidence at the point of donation.
Sweet Potato Tec designed an integration that would allow Mencap to build and manage donation forms within Drupal while using FinDock and Salesforce to handle payment orchestration, fundraising records and supporter data behind the scenes.
The result is a clear architecture for an inclusive donation journey that supports different ways to give without asking Drupal to take on sensitive payment responsibilities.
Organisation
Mencap
Sector
UK charity
Key platforms
Drupal, FinDock, Salesforce Nonprofit Cloud, Stripe and GoCardless
Accessibility
WCAG 2.1 AA as the minimum accessibility requirement
Ways to give
One-time and recurring donations
Data mapping
More than 70 optional fields alongside the required payment information
About Mencap
Mencap is a UK charity that supports people with a learning disability, their families and carers.
Digital accessibility is therefore central to the way the organisation communicates and provides services. Its donation experience needs to work for people using different devices and assistive technologies while also giving its fundraising and operations teams reliable information.
The challenge
The challenge
Mencap needed more control over the experience supporters encountered when making a donation.
Existing fundraising forms could process donations, but they placed restrictions on design, accessibility and validation. Cross-domain journeys also risked making the donation process feel disconnected from the wider Mencap website.
Behind the form, the organisation needed donations to reach the correct Salesforce records with the appropriate supporter, campaign, Gift Aid and payment information attached.
The new approach therefore had to address several connected requirements:
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Meet WCAG 2.1 AA accessibility requirements as a minimum
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What would have happened if nothing had changed?
Supporters could have continued moving between different domains during the giving process, creating an experience that felt less consistent with the Mencap website.
The organisation would also have had fewer opportunities to validate information at the point of collection and establish a reliable connection between each donation, the supporter and the relevant fundraising campaign.
As donation activity grew, any gaps between the website, payment processing and Salesforce could have created more reconciliation work and made problems harder to investigate.
Our approach
The approach
Sweet Potato Tec designed a layered integration that gives each platform a clear role.
Drupal controls the supporter-facing experience. It presents the forms, validates the information entered and returns the supporter to an appropriate confirmation or failure page.
FinDock manages payment orchestration. It creates the Payment Intent, routes the supporter to the correct payment provider and processes the payment events returned by Stripe or GoCardless.
Salesforce Nonprofit Cloud holds the resulting supporter, payment and fundraising information. FinDock Guided Matching connects each transaction with the appropriate contact, account and campaign context.
This separation allows Mencap to improve the donation experience without duplicating sensitive payment functionality inside Drupal.
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Accessible donation forms in Drupal
Donation and campaign forms sit within the Mencap website, giving the charity control over presentation, instructions and validation. The forms have been designed around WCAG 2.1 AA as the minimum accessibility standard, helping reduce barriers for supporters using different devices and assistive technologies.
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A dedicated FinDock Webform Handler
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Secure payment orchestration
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Reliable Salesforce records
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Monitoring and audit information
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How the donation journey works
The accessible donation journey
Scope of work
The defined scope
- Drupal donation and campaign forms
- Salesforce Nonprofit Cloud
- Payment responses
- One-time and recurring donations
- Guided Matching
- Migration of legacy audited forms and downstream recognition in Business Central sit outside the scope of this integration.
- The FinDock Payment API
- Canonical data mapping
- Supporter redirection
- Stripe and GoCardless
- Logging and operational monitoring
Key integrations
Drupal
FinDock
Salesforce Nonprofit Cloud
Stripe
GoCardless
Capabilities
Accessible donation forms
Payment orchestration
Guided Matching
Canonical data mapping
The outcome
The value for Mencap
- A more inclusive supporter experience — accessible Drupal forms, clear instructions and validation should make it easier for more people to complete a donation.
- Greater donor confidence — supporters remain within a consistent Mencap-branded journey before moving securely to the chosen payment provider.
- Cleaner fundraising data — canonical mapping and Guided Matching connect donations with the correct supporter, account and campaign information.
- Less manual reconciliation — FinDock captures payment events and passes structured information into Salesforce, reducing reliance on manual handovers between systems.
- More ways to give — the same Drupal experience can support one-time and recurring donations through Stripe and GoCardless.
- Faster investigation when something goes wrong — correlation identifiers, recorded responses and platform logs create an auditable support trail across the integration.
- A more resilient donation process — asynchronous payment confirmation, error handling and central monitoring help protect the journey during failures and periods of increased activity.
“The experience has actually made an IT project a joy.”
What happened next
What happens next?
The architecture provides the foundation for delivery. The remaining work centres on five readiness gates:
Finalising the canonical data model and its destination within Salesforce Nonprofit Cloud
Completing Drupal validation as the donation forms are onboarded
Aligning Guided Matching and FinDock configuration across every environment
Running integrated system and user acceptance testing, including failure scenarios
Promoting the solution through controlled release windows with backups, smoke testing and a documented rollback process
Mencap retains ownership of the donor experience, validation readiness and final approval. Sweet Potato Tec builds and tests the integration, supplies the Salesforce configuration and supports controlled deployment.
Making technology work around the supporter
A donation journey may appear simple from the outside. Behind it sit accessibility requirements, payment providers, supporter records, campaign information and operational controls.
By giving Drupal, FinDock and Salesforce clearly defined responsibilities, Mencap can improve the supporter experience while maintaining secure payment processing and cleaner fundraising information.
The technology remains behind the scenes. The supporter receives a clearer and more consistent way to give.
Planning a donation or payment integration? If your organisation needs to connect its website, FinDock, Salesforce or payment providers, Sweet Potato Tec can help you define the architecture before development begins.
We will work with you to understand the supporter journey, accessibility requirements, data model and operational responsibilities so the finished integration works for both your users and your internal teams.
Let us make your technology work harder for your organisation
Tell us what you are trying to improve, where your current systems are holding you back and what success would look like.
We will arrange an initial conversation to explore your requirements and determine whether Sweet Potato Tec is the right partner to help.