Most INGOs (and foundations, humanitarian organisations, and institutions) are restructuring. It's a familiar ritual that happens every few years.
A restructure usually means a new strategy, reorganised departments, and shifting language: Digital becomes an "Innovation Hub." Programmes become "Portfolios." Headquarters moves closer to regions - then sometimes back again.
These restructures respond to real pressures: shrinking funding, demands for localisation, digital technology, and the need to demonstrate impact in complex environments.
But after the dust settles, many organisations face the same challenges again. Digital tools struggle with adoption. Programme teams remain stretched. Local partners feel distant and removed from decision-making.
The problem is that restructures adjust the organisation's shape while leaving its foundational design assumptions intact.
What almost all INGOs need is not another restructure. It is a redesign.
What Redesign Actually Looks Like
Redesign is not a quick exercise.
Unlike restructuring - which moves boxes on an organisational chart - redesign asks deeper questions about how an organisation creates value and converts resources into impact.
It requires everyone involved to free themselves from the gravitational pull of institutional habit.
It means examining both the business model - how the organisation sustains and funds its work - and the operating model: how decisions are made, how partnerships function, and how resources flow through the organisation.
It works best when co-designed with all the people who live within the system. Boards, leadership teams, country offices, partners, and communities all experience the organisation differently.
This kind of work is necessarily iterative. Ideas must be stress-tested, tools must be piloted, and new ways of working must be embedded gradually into governance and day-to-day decision-making.
It will take at least 6 months.
One strong example of this approach is Lumos. Since September last year, we have been working together on a fundamental redesign as part of its 10-Year Ambition. Rather than producing another static strategy, Lumos is rethinking both its business model and operating model for a world where aid flows are changing, partnerships are central, and decisions must be made faster and closer to the contexts where impact happens.
The process brings together leadership, country teams, board members, and partners to co-create the tools and frameworks that will guide the organisation over the next decade.
Lumos is doing exactly what most organisations in the sector should be doing.
The Work Ahead
In the short term, redesign is harder and more time-consuming than restructuring.
But the alternative is to keep rearranging organisational charts while the world changes around them. Meaningful change will not come from moving boxes. It will come from reimagining the roles those boxes were meant to play.
To learn more about our process for redesigning INGOs, we'd love to chat: hello@hereiamstudio.com
