Dear Friends and Colleagues,

Networklearning recently took the step to become a stichting – that is an officially registered body (in the Netherlands, where our core team is based) – with a written constitution: setting out our fundamental goals, the means we'll use to achieve them, and how our organisation will be managed.

As with the recent upgrading of our website, this change in 'operating system' will have many consequences. It demands self-study and research first – in particular a good assessment of current and future capacity. Our first 7+ years of existence have been informal: achievements have been fuelled almost purely by unpaid enthusiasm, driven towards broadly shared goals. That's great for as long as it lasts. But in the long term issues around the good management and sustainability of that energy arise. We saw it was the right time to…  talk, refresh the vision, redefine our structure – and future path.

We will shortly bring you more news on this – but how about your organisation? Has your NGO been established a while and could it be time to move up to another level?

We know that organisations, like organisms, have life cycles – so a timely, thought-out and well-managed restructuring can aid successful evolution to the next level. Hopefully, avoiding the more painful symptoms that begin to show themselves when a system has outlived its time.

How do you begin – and what do we have to offer in the way of useful manuals and resources? See our quickstart guide, Self-Assessment for Established NGOs!