Most campaign dashboards are built to impress the room: big totals, green arrows, a map. None of it tells the finance director what to do in the next hour — and the closing stretch is decided in hours.
We strip the dashboard to four numbers: dollars in the door today against target, recurring opt-in rate, cost per dollar raised by channel, and the burn-down to the filing deadline. Everything else is a drill-down, not a headline.
"A dashboard is not a trophy case. It is a decision surface — if a number does not change what you do next, it does not belong above the fold."
The test we apply is simple: at 11pm on the last night of the quarter, can the finance director look at one screen and know whether to send the extra email? If the answer is anything but yes, the dashboard is not done.