How do I track clicks on <a> tag with span class inside using Google Tag Manager?

I've been trying to get GTM to fire a tag every time a user clicks on the link text below ("Click here to donate").

  <a href="https://www.testurl.com/donate" target="_blank" >
  <span class="donate"><img src="donate-icon.png"></span>
  Click here to donate!    </a>

I'm able to get the tag to fire when users click on the image by using trigger with the following settings below. But I can't get the tag to fire when users click on the link text.

Trigger type: Click - All Elements

Trigger fires on: Some Clicks

Click Element --> matches CSS selector --> .donate

*Note: I'm unable to insert any CSS into the A tag directly due to the site template not being directly controlled by me. I could make a request but it would take weeks if not longer to get the necessary approvals and work done.

Any suggestions are greatly appreciated! Thank you!

Solution

You can try the following setup using Click URL instead of Click Element:

Trigger type: Click - All Elements
Trigger fires on: Some Clicks
Click URL: https://www.testurl.com/donate

or another solution could be:

Trigger type: Click - All Elements
Trigger fires on: Some Clicks
Click Text: Click here to donate!

solutions based on: https://support.google.com/tagmanager/answer/6106961?hl=en#Click

Another possiblity would be to use the trigger type Click - Just Links:

Trigger type: Click - Just Links
Trigger fires on: Some Link Clicks
Click URL: https://www.testurl.com/donate

What if you have no text or URL?
In this case you can track an element with a specific class attribute:

Trigger type: Click - All Elements
Trigger fires on: Some Clicks
Click Classes: toggle-sidebar (or a more specific class)