Research, Design, and Development Fund

What your support makes possible 

Your contribution funds the tools that power UX Research, UX Design, and product deployment work at Orcasound, the open-source bioacoustics platform helping people listen to and protect Southern Resident Killer Whales and the Salish Sea ecosystem. 

This work is professional and rigorous. It takes the right tools to do it well. The platforms below make it possible to conduct field research, coordinate remote teams, build and deploy software, and use AI to move faster and think more clearly, all in service of the whales and the people working to protect them. 

Claude AI Max: $2,400 full cost / $96 nonprofit cost. Research synthesis, writing, strategy, and product work. 

Figma Professional: $144 full cost / $0 nonprofit cost. UX design, prototyping, and developer handoff. 

Google Workspace: $168 full cost / $0 nonprofit cost. Team email, documents, and video meetings with recording. 

Netlify: $240 full cost / $240 nonprofit cost. Web project hosting and deployment. 

Vercel: $240 full cost / $0 nonprofit cost. Frontend deployment and hosting. 

Zoom with Scheduler: $220 full cost / $110 nonprofit cost. Stakeholder interviews and team coordination. 

Total: $3,412 full cost / $446 nonprofit cost. A savings of $2,966 per year (87% reduction). Every dollar is tracked transparently through Open Collective. 

Where the team is right now (May 2026) 

Sound of the Salish Sea exhibit redesign at The Whale Museum on Friday Harbor: three early-career UX interns just hired; SV1 field research complete; SV2 planned for late spring 2026. 

Orcahome, Orcasound's main website redesign, shipping mid-May 2026 with new Dev volunteers contributing. 

Shipnoise, our maritime stakeholder tool, deployed in beta in May 2026; usability research with Pilots and Captains coming next. 

Volunteer contributor recruiting ongoing across UX research, UX design, and software development. 

Two ways to help 

Become a recurring supporter at $20 to $25 per month. This is the most valuable kind of support because it makes the platform overhead sustainable. Twenty recurring supporters at $25 per month covers the entire annual budget. 

Make a one-time gift. $221.10 covers one month of Claude AI Max, our largest line item. Larger one-time gifts can fund project-specific campaigns like SV2 field research at The Whale Museum ($1,000). 

A note on costs 

This team operates as lean as possible. Orcasound has no formal legal status and is not affiliated with a 501(c)(3) organization, so the nonprofit discounts listed above are not currently available to us. Pursuing a fiscal sponsorship relationship with a qualifying nonprofit partner is an active goal. Your support helps bridge that gap while that work continues. 

Questions about the work or the budget 

Brendan Thatcher, Product Lead, [email protected].