Lighthouse

A social network for nonprofits + A LinkedIn for communities.

Nonprofits struggle to increase their visibility online, making it extremely difficult for people to find information about local resources and expand their nonprofit network. As a result, individuals are often left scrolling through unhelpful Google results when they are searching for local resources. 

Factors that contribute to this issue are limited nonprofit budgets and outdated technology, but the greatest consequence of this disconnect is that available resources continue to be left unused solely because people in need are unable to find them. With over 1.8 nonprofits in the United States and over 22 million people looking for help online, this problem has proven to be widespread.

The reality is, whether it's a global pandemic, a natural disaster, an unexpected tragedy, or a financial crisis, the nonprofit sector is the safety net that the community relies on. In the wake of 2020, nonprofits are now more than ever looking for support and for new opportunities to connect online.

Lighthouse is the first collaborative social network that makes it easy for participants, volunteers, and donors to learn about & get involved with local nonprofits. On Lighthouse 1.0 (currently in beta):

Nonprofits build social profiles to: 

- Highlight programs & opportunities for people to get involved (participate, volunteer, donate)

- Connect with interested participants, volunteers, & donors

- Collaborate with other nonprofits

Individuals can easily set up a profile to: 

- Search by keyword & location to find specified nonprofits  

- Follow & message nonprofits

- Stay updated on ways to get involved with the nonprofits they follow

It’s simple, with Lighthouse people will no longer be left frustrated scrolling through Google results when looking for nonprofits. Instead, people will finally be able to easily find the help they need and give back to the communities that they love.

Through an intentional community-based framework, Lighthouse is also creating opportunities for nonprofits to collaborate with each other, which, in turn, is helping the impact of the public good go even further.

The grand vision for Lighthouse is to serve the 1.8 million nonprofits that are established nationwide, the 22+ million people looking for help online, the 17+ million people looking for volunteer opportunities online, and all of the incredible donors that are continuing to fund possibility. That being said, Lighthouse will continue to be strategically launched by geographic location. This ensures that true value is created for all users. The first local context Lighthouse is being tested is around the Denver-Metro area. Within this context, I am targeting:

Nonprofits: Specifically grassroots nonprofits; these nonprofits have small teams and small budgets and, as a result, lack the capacity to increase their visibility online and easily grow their networks in the community. Additionally, these nonprofits are integral parts of the communities they serve and are eager to collaborate with other nonprofits online. More specifically, nonprofits that have been established within the last ten years will be targeted. These organizations have been founded and have grown in the era of technology, they understand that an online digital presence is important, they see that visibility is a necessity to survive in the market, and they are eager to have an online space that can maximize their community impact.

Individuals: College students are the initial target user for the individual side of the marketplace. As a subpopulation, college students are a diverse community of individuals that care about a variety of causes. These students often engage with nonprofits in multiple capacities, whether they are seeking resources for personal needs, or are looking for new opportunities to volunteer. I am especially eager to connect with first-year college students. These students are in a new environment and are the ones most proactively looking for ways to build connections to the community.  

Most importantly, as Denver is one of the fastest growing cities in the country, setting the nonprofit sector and their communities up for success will be imperative in ensuring the most vulnerable communities in Denver have access to the greatest opportunities available to a growing city. 

Growing up, I always found joy in giving back to my local community through volunteering, but it wasn’t until I was put in a position of need that I truly understood the life-changing impact nonprofits have. In 2014, I was a passenger in a car accident that left me paralyzed. In a moment, I went from a healthy, active 16-year-old to needing resources and support in a way that I could have never imagined (and therefore never planned for). After my accident, it was the support of nonprofit organizations that enabled me to thrive in my new normal. Unfortunately, these organizations were often hard to find. I realized, had it not been for word-of-mouth within my community I would have never had access to the resources that gave me hope. In life, we all experience moments where we need help. In these moments finding help should be easy. This personal experience gave me direct insight into this problem and served as the perfect foundation for me to grow into a leader in this field.

Later, during my time at the University of Denver, I was recognized as a Distinguished Public Good Scholar for my integration of learning across community-engaged experiences, reflection on public identity, and contributions to the public good. As a student, I engulfed myself in my Sociology studies. I was passionate about understanding the struggles people face and the systems that perpetuate inequality. My classes: Current Social Problems & Speaking On Ideas That Matter, were a few of my most formative learning experiences. This area of study paired well with my minor in Entrepreneurship. I have found that Sociology taught me about the problems people face and Entrepreneurship equipped me with tools to create solutions to those struggles. 

This education set a strong foundation for my professional work. Over the past 5 years, I have worked within various nonprofits, supporting underserved communities and navigating complicated societal systems. Through these experiences, I have become a strategic thinker and have come to better understand the challenges nonprofit leaders face.

In summary, it is my combination of lived experience, professional exposure, and my record of perseverance that makes me not only a well-rounded leader for Lighthouse but also an empathetic leader that is the best fit to take this venture from an early idea to a successful product capable of transforming an entire industry.

Outside of my own personal experience, I have worked hard to understand the needs of nonprofits and their communities.

To understand the needs of the nonprofit sector and the individuals involved in nonprofit communities, I approached this venture with curiosity first, as opposed to having a set agenda. To do this, I counseled nonprofit representatives and various individuals from the beginning. Before designing Lighthouse I did discovery calls with nonprofits to understand the barriers they experienced and the changes they would like to see. Additionally, I engaged with individuals and found that regardless of their personal connection to the nonprofit sector (individual in need, volunteer, or donor) they were frustrated with current solutions and were interested in improving their connectivity to nonprofits. Just as these potential users were counseled during the design phase, their input was incorporated during the development phases of Lighthouse. Now that Lighthouse is a live product, the feedback from the users continues to be incredibly valuable. As feedback comes, I work hard to adapt the services and build out additional opportunities to improve Lighthouse’s capacity to better meet the needs of the users.

Additionally, I continue to pursue very intentional efforts to improve my understanding of the circumstances faced by nonprofits and local community members. I am currently participating in the Social Impact Leadership Program with the Denver Chamber of Commerce. Through this program, I am expanding my leadership skills and will be working with a local nonprofit. Over the next 6 months in this role, I will be implementing a project to improve the organization's community impact. By working within a nonprofit organization I am refining my understanding of the needs and challenges faced by the community. This is putting me in a better position to deliver a solution fit to respond to these needs.

Lighthouse is the first nonprofit-focused technology solution that is built for collaboration. None of the current market solutions are designed for nonprofits to actively collaborate with each other or their communities. As a result, these products have missed out on a huge market opportunity. While Lighthouse was initially built to decrease communication barriers between nonprofits and community members, the beta launch has also unveiled an incredible opportunity to innovate the ways in which nonprofits work together. 

For a long time, nonprofits have viewed other organizations through a competitive lens. With Lighthouse nonprofits are showing this is an outdated perspective and incredible opportunities are created when nonprofits can openly work together. This concept was tested through a resource exchange program available to the nonprofit beta testers. Through this program, nonprofits have shared baby formula, personal hygiene products, warm socks, and even bed frames (23!). These products were transferred from nonprofits where they were being underutilized directly to nonprofits lacking that specific resource, and then from those nonprofits directly to community members in need. In the transfer with 23 bedframes, the furniture went from gathering dust in a storage unit to furnishing a home for individuals aging out of the foster care system. 

Imagine how incredible the impact will be when this solution is implemented on a larger scale. This could change the market in a catalytic way and build stronger more resilient communities as a result! 

It’s simple: By prioritizing collaborative features Lighthouse is already creating greater value for our early users than alternative competitors have with their more mature products.

Primary Impact Goal: Facilitate 100 successful resource transfers between nonprofits. 

Beyond the high-level growth goals, to increase the number of nonprofit partners and community members using Lighthouse, over the next year I am eager to build out additional opportunities for the Lighthouse community on the platform. To date, the resource exchange program (detailed above) has been facilitated through an email exchange. Nonprofits can send me information about a resource they have an excess of or are in need of. From there, I send that note out to all the Lighthouse nonprofit partners. Over the next year, I would like to streamline this exchange program onto the platform to make this exchange more cohesive. 

With this implementation, the goal will be to facilitate 100 successful resource transfers between nonprofits over the next year. Whether these resource transfers are small (transferring a single box of tampons from a sports program to a women's shelter) or large (23 bedframes from a storage unit to a home for people aging out of the foster care system) the transformational impact on people’s lives will be incredible.

Lighthouse has taken the technology tools that are at the foundation of other social networks and has adapted them to best meet the specific needs of the Nonprofit Sector and the communities that they serve. The original Lighthouse software was developed with Django and Python. A new site will be in development soon to transfer the code into PHP. Compared to other web languages, PHP doesn't require manual or intensive studying and the syntax is logical and well-organized. This will make it easier for me to manage the code even though I don’t have a deep technical background. In partnership with Elastic.co this new site will also implement their search engine tools. This will create a more user-friendly website with more accurate search results.

By learning from and adapting existing social network technologies, Lighthouse is providing a valuable solution for users that can scale easily.

# Currently served: 235 nonprofit partners and 100 individual community members. 

# Served in 1 year: 1,989 nonprofit partners and ideally at least one* community member engaging with Lighthouse per each nonprofit partner.

Currently, there are 235 nonprofits and 100 individual community members testing out Lighthouse. Over the next year, my goal is to increase the number of Denver-Metro nonprofits that Lighthouse serves to at least 1,989. This number represents 16% of the nonprofits in the Denver-Metro area. Research that has been conducted on successful innovation movements suggests that acquiring 16% of a market is a key milestone in obtaining promising traction for a new product that seeks to innovate an industry. By securing this percentage of the initial market in the next year, Lighthouse will be perfectly primed to expand into new markets.

*It's important to note that in the long term, the goal will be for the number of individuals on Lighthouse to far exceed the number of nonprofits, but in the early stages of building this community, the individual user count may be slower to grow.

As a non-technical first-time founder, there are a few foreseeable barriers that I will have to navigate in order to accomplish the goals I have outlined for the next year.

1. As a non-technical founder, I foresee moments where technical barriers will make it difficult to iterate on early-user feedback in a timely manner. To navigate this barrier I am having the code for Lighthouse adapted to PHP as this language will make it easier for me to manage the code even though I don’t have a deep technical background. Additionally, I am actively seeking a Director of Technology to join my team. I am eager to find a product leader who is both knowledgeable in the coding space and is also driven to create social impact solutions.

2. As a bootstrapped startup, a financial strain may also create barriers that limit the impact Lighthouse can have over the next year. In preparation for this, I am actively applying to various grant opportunities to increase my runway for Lighthouse. Additionally, I have previously participated in a pitch cohort and will be joining a Theory of Change cohort this spring to improve my ability to communicate the value of Lighthouse to social impact investors.

Lighthouse is built within a for-profit model in order to create a truly sustainable solution for nonprofits.

Eventhough Lighthouse is designed as a two-sided marketplace, the key customer is the Nonprofit User as opposed to the Individual User. While Lighthouse is free for current beta testers, down the line nonprofits will pay a membership-based fee. The price for the membership is still being determined, but a sliding scale model (based on nonprofit annual expenses) versus a “one-size fits all” price is likely the route that will be taken. This fee will give nonprofits access to the platform to build a profile, and will also give them access to an online community to exchange resources and information, build partnerships with other nonprofits, and access exclusive savings on the products and services that their nonprofit needs. Nonprofits currently using Lighthouse have requested these services to be added to the platform and have displayed a willingness to pay for them. Additionally, by offsetting the costs for Lighthouse through the membership fees paid by nonprofits, the service can remain free for individuals. This best ensures that the mission of decreasing the barriers to accessing the nonprofit sector is made possible, regardless of an individual’s ability to pay.

Lighthouse will reach Financial Sustainability through a combination of earned revenue (detailed below) and investment capital. While service contracts for the government are not currently a part of the financial sustainability plan, this may be a route that is pursued down the line.

Membership Fees: Nonprofit Memberships will give organizations access to Lighthouse and the collaborative tools that make it easy to share resources and highlight pertinent needs. As the network grows, additional subscription options will provide nonprofits premium access to tools including data analytics. This will allow nonprofits to learn in real-time about the needs their communities are searching for online. Early financial projections suggest that this revenue stream will earn up to $5 million over the first three years.

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR): Corporations spend over $2 billion annually on cause-related marketing. Lighthouse is positioned to earn $3 million from this market over the first three years. If traction allows for expansion into the opportunities for corporations beyond advertising in this same timeline, then the market opportunity is much larger. 

Additionally, by its very design, Lighthouse becomes more financially sustainable as the community grows. As a network, each individual and each nonprofit that joins Lighthouse becomes a new epicenter of additional opportunities for the Lighthouse community. For example, each nonprofit that joins Lighthouse creates greater value for the individuals on Lighthouse that are seeking support and resources. The same is true for the reciprocal. Each individual that joins Lighthouse to connect with local resources, provides greater proof to nonprofits that there is value in actively participating in this network. This reciprocal relationship speaks to the concept of “networking effects.”

As Lighthouse grows, investment capital will also be raised to support scaling the company.