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Surfrider Foundation

Cross-Team Process Facilitation for an Ocean Conservation Nonprofit

Surfrider built a new project delivery framework and disaster-response process through CauseMic’s facilitated workshops.

The Challenge

Based in California, Surfrider Foundation uses its thriving member activist network in coastal communities across the country to “protect our special coastal places, ensure our ocean is healthy and wild, keep pollution out of the water and make sure every beach is clean and accessible for all to enjoy.”

After partnering with CauseMic on a digital transformation, Surfrider needed to make sure their people and processes could keep pace with their new technology.

The team wanted to improve project scoping, scale existing processes, establish common ways of working across teams, and make collaboration more effective and transparent.

volunteer picking up trash near beach

When Surfrider engaged CauseMic, they had one overarching question:

  • How can we establish a cohesive and effective working environment, keeping our new technology in mind?

Our Solutions

We brought Surfrider’s teams together to understand what was getting in the way, work through their biggest challenges, and build practical processes they could use.

Cross-Team Discovery & Alignment

  • To understand how Surfrider worked internally, we held a discovery session with executive leadership and the Marketing and Membership teams.
  • We identified barriers to effective collaboration, the problems each team member most wanted to solve, and where resistance to change needed to be addressed.

Process Design & Workshop Facilitation

  • We then facilitated a full-day workshop focused on improving coordination between Marketing and Membership, prioritizing work, and identifying ways to improve planned activations, including year-end fundraising efforts.
  • We also guided the team through the process for raising funds in the wake of disasters, drafting their Disaster Relief Standard Operating Procedure (SOP).
  • Workshop findings were synthesized into a key findings document with recommended improvements to optimize Surfrider’s ways of working.

The Results

Optimized Ways of Working

  • We initiated joint strategic planning between Marketing and Membership teams, aligning goals, messaging, and coordination for more impactful campaigns.
  • Clear roles, responsibilities, and processes were established to help teams deliver consistent, high-quality work.
  • Pain points were identified and a project delivery framework was created to bring people, processes, and tools together, reduce redundancies, and get key decision-makers involved earlier in the process.
  • The new framework was successfully put into play with two fundraising campaigns, Treat It Better and Dirtiest Beach Day, demonstrating how the team could work together on quick-turn projects while keeping them on track.
  • An internal SOP clarified how Surfrider should respond, communicate, and fundraise after disasters, including who owns each part of the response and how much effort is expected based on the scale of the disaster.

CauseMic serves as a trusted guide through rapid growth, where many stakeholders are involved and things are often changing quickly.

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Align your processes with your tech and team.

Do your ways of working still reflect how your organization worked five years ago? We can help you identify what’s getting in your way and build practical processes to get you back on track.

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