Chapters
The technology partner you've always needed
...Now within reach
Lighthouse gives mission-driven nonprofits the technical chops to execute: fractional CTO leadership, hands-on development, AI that earns its keep, and the hardware and software to do the work. Priced to your size. Free when it needs to be.
You didn't start a nonprofit to manage software.
But here you are. Wrestling logins, nursing donated laptops past their prime, paying independent contractors who “get the job done.” The work can't wait. The technology keeps making it wait anyway.
Underfunded. Understaffed. And now, somehow also the IT department.
We're the lighthouse.
A nonprofit, built to serve nonprofits. We bring the senior technical leadership and the hands to do the work, delivered as an in-kind grant: we do the work, and the part we cover is the gift. You bring the mission. We build alongside you, and we build so you won't need us forever.
Always on. Always pointed at your work.
Six ways we steer.
One partnership, six ways in. Matched to where you are, scaled to what you can carry.
Fractional CTO
A senior technology leader on call. Strategy, architecture, and the hard vendor calls, without a full-time salary.
Project & Development
We build the thing. The site, the database, the integration, the workflow that finally just works.
AI Strategy
AI that earns its place. Where it helps, where it doesn't, and how to adopt it without the hype or the risk.
Workshops
We teach as we build, and leave your team sharper than we found it.
Device Access
FreeRefurbished, ready-to-work hardware, free, for the smallest and newest nonprofits.
Software Access
FreeThe tools and licenses you need, off your budget and onto ours. For the smallest and newest nonprofits.
The smaller you are, the more we carry.
Our rates slide with your size, and no mission is ever turned away for cost alone.
- Well resourced? You fund your work and help us light the way for the next org.
- Small and stretched? You pay a fraction.
- Just getting started? It's on us.
We'll find your number together when you apply.
We measure our success in yours.
We'd rather work ourselves out of a job. We build the systems, teach the skills, and leave your team with the confidence to run all of it. The only capacity that counts is the kind that stays.
From the dark of “we can’t” to the dawn of “we run this”
We're new. That's the best part.
Lighthouse is just getting started, and early partners shape what it becomes. Come aboard now and you help set the standard: systems your team runs without us, hours handed back to the people delivering the impact, and a model the whole sector can follow.
- About $140,000 of in-kind grants and services delivered in our first three months.
- CaseLight, our open-source case management system, is live and public.
- Founder-led, with every grant decided by a recorded board vote.
Bring us your mission.
If technology is standing between you and your work, bring it to us. Apply to the in-kind grant program and we'll chart the course together. Whatever your size, there's a place for you here.