About
What is Lighthouse?
Lighthouse is an online diagnostic tool.
The assessment will guide you and your board through a series of questions about your organisation and its finances. Some are straightforward yes or no answers, and some questions include a set of statements answered by moving a slider to a description that best fits your situation.
After submitting your answers, you’ll receive a report containing two sections which show:
- How your community organisation is performing against six key business areas
- A short-term sustainability report on your community organisation’s strengths and weaknesses.
What are the benefits?
With the help of Lighthouse your organisation can grow stronger and more successful.
Lighthouse will help you understand your organisation’s strengths and weaknesses so that you can take steps to become more resilient.
Completing Lighthouse with Board and staff members offers a valuable opportunity to share information and compare views on a range of issues relating to your organisation.
Lighthouse can provide data to inform your strategic review, and will highlight issues which need to be tackled in the short, medium and long term.
How was Lighthouse developed?
Lighthouse was developed to help community organisations to spot the early warning signs before a crisis hits.
We have built Lighthouse based on our experience helping groups with crisis management and supporting business turnaround. Using the combined experience and knowledge of our members and our staff team we’ve learned how to accurately diagnose an organisation’s resilience and short-term sustainability. We know how to build that resilience in a way that is practical and effective, addressing specific issues, and overcoming complex problems.
How does Lighthouse work?
The Lighthouse tool will ask you a series of questions. Some are straightforward yes or no answers, and some questions include a set of statements answered by moving a slider to a description that best fits your situation.
Once you complete the assessment, Lighthouse will analyse your answers and give you two detailed reports:
Report One: Resilience
The first report will summarise your organisation's current health and resilience status under the 'Six Pillars of Sustainability':
Structure
Looking at whether you have the structure, processes and management systems you need.
People
Looking at whether you have the leadership, skills and experience you need.
Finances
Looking at whether you have sufficient resources to maintain operations and invest for the future.
Business model
Looking at whether your business model is clear, deliverable and sustainable.
Relationships
Looking at whether you have effective and constructive relationships with your community, other local organisations, stakeholders, local authorities and other public sector bodies.
Culture
Looking at your approach to innovation and change, customer service, support for staff and volunteers and wider community involvement.
Report Two: Short-term sustainability
Your second report focuses on your organisation's short-term sustainability. It gives your organisation a green, amber or red score against 12 key short term sustainability indicators.
Red indicators should not be ignored. Organisations should think through the issues that the report flagged, and develop an action plan to address them.
Get expert support
You can achieve more for your community with specialist advice from the Locality team. Once you’ve received your report, we encourage you to get in touch with us if there are areas that you are concerned about.