A website that bought back a forest.
How DOPPS raised €45,000 in just eight months to purchase 10 hectares of Slovenian forest — and how an intuitive donation experience turned web traffic into conserved land.
Slovenia has lots of forest. Just not the right kind.
A bilingual donation website built to fund the purchase — and re-wilding — of old, natural Slovenian forest where the country's most endangered forest birds still live.
Less than 1% of Slovenia's forest is truly natural
Despite Slovenia's vast forested areas, less than 1% of its old, natural forest has been preserved — and what remains exists only in rare forest reserves. For the most endangered forest birds, that's far too little. DOPPS needed a way to start increasing the share of natural forest in Slovenia, beginning with funds to purchase land they could give back to nature.
A bilingual donation engine
We built a bilingual (Slovenian and English) WordPress site with one mission: collect as many donations as possible to purchase forest that would be left to natural development. The design took its colour palette from the forest itself, used the client's high-resolution photography, and made donating as effortless as sending a text message.
That's how much old, natural forest remains.
The rest has been managed, replanted, or cut. Forest specialists — the bird species that depend on this kind of habitat — are running out of places to nest, breed, and survive.
Without intervention, some species may disappear from Slovenia within years. DOPPS launched the Guardians of Forest Specialists campaign to start buying back land — one hectare at a time.
An intuitive site that turned visitors into donors.
Three design choices made the difference: clear messaging, frictionless donation paths, and a homepage that visibly showed campaign momentum to anyone who landed on it.
Donating, made effortless
We focused on the intuitive presentation of the campaign's goals and on making donation feel as simple as possible. A persistent notification badge on every page reminds visitors that SMS donations are just a text away — the lowest-friction donation path of all.
For those who want more options, we wired in bank transfers, credit cards through Stripe, and PayPal. Every method takes one click from anywhere on the site.
A palette borrowed from the forest
We chose a modern colour palette that mirrors the forest itself — deep greens, warm earth tones, the gold of sunlight through canopy. Sections are laid out clearly so visitors always know where they are and what they can do next.
Every page is built around the campaign's high-resolution photography supplied by DOPPS — putting the actual subject of the donation, Slovenia's forest, at the centre of the experience.
A homepage you could watch grow
We built a live progress graph on the home page that updates as donations come in — showing how far the campaign is from its next milestone. It turns abstract fundraising into something visitors can see moving forward.
Alongside the graph, statements from Slovenian and international public figures — each having picked their own "forest specialist" — give the campaign a human voice and a chorus of trusted supporters.
Five birds that depend on old forest.
The donations don't go to "the cause" in the abstract. They go to real species — birds whose populations in Slovenia are already badly depleted. Each one needs the kind of natural, unmanaged forest that the campaign is funding.
White-backed woodpecker
Dendrocopos leucotosNeeds decaying, old-growth deciduous trees for nesting and feeding. One of Slovenia's rarest forest specialists.
Capercaillie
Tetrao urogallusThe largest of the grouse — survives only in continuous old conifer forests. Numbers in Slovenia have crashed.
Red-breasted flycatcher
Ficedula parvaA tiny migrant that nests in mature beech forests. Loses habitat when old trees are removed.
Black stork
Ciconia nigraA shy forest-nesting stork. Requires undisturbed old trees near clean streams to raise its young.
Boreal owl
Aegolius funereusA small forest owl that uses old woodpecker holes for nesting. Disappears when its habitat is fragmented.
DOPPS — Slovenia's largest nature conservation NGO.
DOPPS — Društvo za opazovanje in proučevanje ptic Slovenije is the largest non-governmental organisation for nature protection in Slovenia. Its mission: protect birds and their habitats — and through them, contribute to the preservation of nature and the well-being of the entire society.
We've been cooperating with DOPPS for many years, and together we've created many beautiful stories. The Forest Specialists website is one of them — born out of the ACF programme in Slovenia, with one clear goal: start increasing the area of natural forests in Slovenia, beginning with a single forest purchased back from the timber economy and given to the birds.
A website that became a forest.
Most software projects ship and then they're done. This one ended with an actual purchase of actual forest — land that's now being given back to nature, hosting birds that had nowhere else to go. It's rare for a website to have an outcome you can walk into, so when one does, we don't take that lightly.
We are very satisfied with the functionality and appearance of the Forest Specialists website, and the good user experience has been confirmed by users themselves. We raised the funds for the purchase of the forest in only eight months.
Let's take the first steps together.
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