Product
Everything that happens between the caging file and the answer.
Lighthouse reads your response data, ties every gift to the mailing that produced it, and keeps one set of numbers that everyone works from.
Caging
From vendor file to posted gift, without a keystroke.
Files arrive on their own schedule and in their own shape. Lighthouse takes them as they come and does the same four things to every one.
The file lands
Upload it yourself, or let the caging vendor drop it straight into their own scoped account. A layout you receive regularly gets mapped once.
It gets checked
Every row is read, typed and validated, and the totals are reconciled against the file’s own control counts before a single gift is written.
Gifts meet keycodes
Each response is matched on the keycode from the reply device, and through it to the package, list and mailing that earned it.
Results move
Revenue, response and cost per dollar raised update the same day the file arrives — for you and for the client, at the same moment.
Nothing is quietly dropped to keep the totals tidy.
A keycode that doesn’t resolve is not discarded and it is not guessed at. It goes into a queue with its count, its amount and the file it came from.
Point it at the right package and reprocess. The gifts post, and every figure that depended on them corrects itself in place — no re-upload, no restated report.
| Keycode | Gifts | Amount | From file | Action |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 25SPR-A7 | 412 | $18,640 | mercury_0421.csv | |
| 25SPR-A9 | 88 | $3,910 | mercury_0421.csv | |
| YE24-EM2 | 31 | $1,455 | rivet_0418.csv |
Campaign structure
Your mail already has a shape. Lighthouse keeps it.
Every gift is stored against the whole chain that produced it — not just the campaign it rolled up into. That is what lets any number on any screen be cut by any level of it.
- Level 1
Client
The nonprofit. Everything below it is scoped to them and invisible to everyone else.
- Level 2
Mailing
One drop, with its in-home date, its quantity and its cost.
- Level 3
Package
The creative that went in the envelope. The unit you actually compare.
- Level 4
List
House, renewal, lapsed, co-op. Where the names came from and what they cost.
- Level 5
Keycode
The string on the reply device. The thing a gift actually arrives carrying.
- Which package beat control?
- Did that co-op list pay for itself?
- House vs. prospect, this year vs. last?
- What did the January drop really cost us?
Dashboard
The whole program on one screen, cut however you need it.
Set the filters once. Every figure and every chart below them moves together, and the definition behind each one never changes.
- Pieces mailed1,284,600
- Revenue raised$1,797,000
- Gifts received72,964
- Response rate5.68%
- Average gift$24.63
- Total cost$1,020,000
- Cost per dollar raised$0.57
- Revenue per piece$1.40
| Month | Revenue | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| Sep | $118,000 | $74,000 |
| Oct | $96,000 | $68,000 |
| Nov | $142,000 | $88,000 |
| Dec | $210,000 | $96,000 |
| Jan | $165,000 | $91,000 |
| Feb | $131,000 | $79,000 |
| Mar | $149,000 | $84,000 |
| Apr | $122,000 | $76,000 |
| May | $138,000 | $82,000 |
| Jun | $176,000 | $95,000 |
| Jul | $158,000 | $88,000 |
| Aug | $192,000 | $99,000 |
| Total | $1,797,000 | $1,020,000 |
Donor insights
The same responses, counted as people instead of rows.
The dashboard answers what a mailing collected. This answers who it collected from, what each of them cost, and whether they gave again.
You choose what makes two rows the same person
Every per-donor figure on this page is computed off that choice, so it matches how your organisation already counts.
Acquisition
- Unique donors
- 9,418
- New donors
- 3,106
- Cost per new donor
- $58.40
Value
- Gifts per donor
- 1.30
- Revenue per donor
- $190.80
- First-365-day value
- $74.10
Retention
- Gave a second gift
- 24.8%
- Median days to it
- 96
- Returning donors
- 6,312
Reports
The three reports you were going to build anyway.
Each one respects the filters you set on the dashboard, and each one exports to CSV or PDF with your branding on it.
Returns by mailing
What each drop brought back, week by week, against what it cost to put in the mail.
Returns by week (sample data) Week Gifts Rev. Wk 1 3,904 $96k Wk 2 6,118 $151k Wk 3 2,740 $67k Package performance
Every package ranked on the measure that decides whether you mail it again.
Year-End Emergency$2.47FY25 Spring Appeal$2.14Acquisition — Coop A$0.82Caging calendar
Which files landed, which are still expected, and which drops are in home this week.
- mercury_0421.csvPosted
- rivet_0418.csvIn process
- harbor_0425.csvExpected
Scheduled reports
Reports that send themselves.
Everyone who needs numbers sets their own preference once — what they want and how often. Lighthouse emails it and links straight back to the live view.
And when a client had no activity that period, nothing goes out. No one gets trained to ignore an empty report.
- Send to
- dana@mercuryfoundation.org
- Report
- Program summaryPackage performanceReturns
- How often
- WeeklyMonthlyAfter each drop
- Quiet periods
- Skip the send when there was no activity
Next send: 1 October · links open the live dashboard, filtered to their view
Access
Six roles, one rule: you only ever see your own.
Scoping is enforced on the record, not on the screen. There is no view that can be shared, guessed at or linked into that crosses a client boundary.
| Role | Sees | Can do |
|---|---|---|
| Super admin | Every agency and every client on the platform. | Everything, including creating agencies and assigning the roles below. |
| Admin | Their own agency and all of its clients. | Add and remove users, set up clients, mailings and packages, upload, report. |
| Employee | Their own agency and all of its clients. | The daily work — mailings, uploads, reports. No user management. |
| Cager | Only the clients they have been assigned to. | Upload caging files and see whether they processed. Nothing else. |
| Employee and cager | Their agency’s clients, plus the ones they cage for. | Both of the above in one login, for the people who do both jobs. |
| Client | Their own organisation, and nothing beyond it. | Read their results, filter them, and take the reports away as CSV or PDF. |
How it is delivered
Your brand on it
Your logo, your colours, your subdomain. Clients sign in to something that looks like it came from your agency.
Your data, exportable
Every table and every report exports to CSV or PDF. Nothing is trapped behind a screen you have to log in to read.
Hosted and backed up
Runs on Microsoft Azure with encryption in transit and at rest, and point-in-time restore on the database.
See it run on a file you already have.
Bring one caging file and your keycode list. In thirty minutes you will be looking at your own last drop, in Lighthouse.
or email nick@lighthouseresults.com