How to Structure an NGO Team

How to structure an NGO's teams, programmes and volunteers so the organisation keeps working through staff turnover, with a simple model you can set up in an afternoon.

· 7 min read

NGOs face a structural problem that businesses rarely do: a large part of the workforce is volunteers, funding arrives by programme rather than by department, and staff turnover is high. A structure copied from a company org chart does not fit. This guide describes one that does.

Organise around programmes, not departments

Funders think in programmes. Volunteers join programmes. Reports are written per programme. So the primary unit of your structure should be the programme, with the organisation's core team as one more group alongside them.

NGO
├── Core team (leadership, finance, comms)
├── Programme A
│   ├── Coordinators
│   └── Volunteers
├── Programme B
└── Regional office

Three roles are enough

Titles multiply in NGOs. For the purpose of structure, three roles cover everything.

  • Admins of a group: responsible for its members, documents and activities. Usually the programme coordinator.
  • Members of a group: staff and volunteers who do the work of that programme.
  • Organisation admins: leadership who can see and manage every group.

Everything else, from field officer to intern, is a job description, not a permission level.

Treat volunteers as members of a programme

Volunteer lists kept separately from programmes go stale within a season. Put each volunteer into the programme group they serve. When they leave, remove them from that group. The organisation-wide volunteer count is then always accurate without anyone maintaining a master list.

Write the programme guide as a living document

Every programme should have one page that a new coordinator could read on day one: purpose, partners, the yearly cycle, the checklists for recurring activities, and links to reports. Keep it attached to the programme group so ownership is clear.

Separate what the public sees from what members see

Partners and funders should be able to find the organisation and its programmes. Internal procedures, contact details and drafts should not be public. Decide per document, and default new internal documents to members-only.

Plan for turnover from the start

Assume every role will change hands. That means: no document lives in a personal drive, every group has at least two admins, and handover is a checklist on the programme page rather than a conversation that may or may not happen.

On Gerakia the NGO is a page, each programme and office is a group with its own admins and members, and programme guides are pages linked to those groups with public or members-only visibility. It is the model above, with nothing to configure.

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