A Structure Fit for the Future? We had to break the mold

Across our sector, all of us – from international NGOs to community-based organizations in the Majority World and around the world – have seen how traditional models have failed us. So what does it mean to build and support a structure fit for the future we envision? One where sustainability, legitimacy, and accountability emerge from our shared power, the time we invest in process, and our interconnection? One where being global means being local every step of the way?

These are some of the questions we at the Movement for Community-led Development (MCLD) continue to ask ourselves as we expand our global network of mostly grassroots and local civil society organizations while staying – and becoming more – true to our values and fit for our purpose.

At MCLD, our goal is to ensure communities can take the lead in solving their own challenges. Therefore, in 2022, after seven years of growth, our global network began a process of transformation to ensure our structure embodied that vision. Over two years, we listened, planned and implemented this restructuring so that our leadership is shared, our power lies with community organizations in the Majority World, we have organizational independence, and the way we work reflects our values. This journey is outlined in ‘Chronicles of a Transformative Movement: Strengthening our Interconnectedness.’

However, what we – our core staff and our 3,000+ organizational members across 40+ nations – have learned is that the process of holding ourselves accountable to the future we want to see doesn’t end there.

As we grow, we will continue to better understand what we think our movement should look like, and the opportunities and challenges our movement and our members will face. That means continuing to learn where we need to keep building structures and making space to intentionally hold ourselves to our values of inclusion, questioning, reflection, co-creation, and care.

So what does it look like in practice to embrace a model that embodies our values and vision of a community-led future?

This is a story of embracing a process that can be messy. One that takes a lot of time. One that is relational and experimental and doesn’t come with a clear roadmap. But the alternative has proven itself insufficient and we cannot keep waiting for the future to come to us.

The most important step we’ve taken in this process is establishing a Global Assembly (GA). This is our global governing board, with equal representation from each of our National Associations. The GA drafts our global policies and minimum standards and signs off on our strategic direction. No one country association holds more influence over the others. The GA is central to our commitment that MCLD continues to be guided collectively and that we are not just participatory, but co-creative and co-owned.

MCLD in Malawi, 2025

But supporting 24 GA members, across three languages, to deliberate and make collective decisions – or even find times to all meet – is a big undertaking. And the GA doesn’t just have regular quarterly board meetings. It is a new structure within a newly independent network. It is creating its own scope and norms, and developing policies and procedures for the network where they were never needed before. That means subcommittees can sometimes meet weekly. Members are learning to use auto-translate on WhatsApp and other online tools to work together across languages. Additionally, most GA members have never served on a board-like structure, but they bring the skills our network needs – legal, financial, operational, executive, facilitative, accessibility. It is a big learning curve, with trial and error, for everyone involved. But each year it is becoming more fine-tuned and members keep getting more invested.

One of the first major tasks of the GA was to oversee a new strategic plan for the entire network. Rather than having the GA draw up the strategic plan for validation by the broader membership, the plan was shaped from conception to action by all of our National Associations and as many members as possible. This meant that a one-year process became a year-and-a-half-long process, became a nearly two-year process. In the end, we have 15 implementation plans, where different countries and stakeholder groups have identified how they are contributing to our shared strategic vision within their own contexts.

The process was long and cumbersome, but it led to a creativity of ideas and understanding of our network’s diverse priorities and needs that would not have been possible otherwise. The effort was a shared initiative for everyone to collaborate on, creating network cohesion and capital. And it is how we can ensure that members’ voices are reflected in all the decisions we make, as a secretariat, coordinators and volunteers.

We also need mechanisms to keep checking ourselves, making sure these processes are as inclusive as we say we want to be. For example, gender equity is one of our core founding values. We have always had standards of at least half women’s representation in our governance and leadership structures. And yet we still found that in our regular engagements, men continued to speak up more, be nominated more, and raise their hands for opportunities more. So we initiated a Gender Working Group, which will, among other things, do a gender audit of our processes and programs. The need for this is clear when more men joined the Gender Working Group than women! A Youth Task Force similarly is an internal enforcer, making sure that young people have a dedicated stake in our structure. Youth are full members of their own National Associations, but they also have their own representation in the GA and their own strategic implementation plan.

One of our biggest challenges to inclusion is access. A key part of MCLD’s advocacy is on better access for local actors to global processes and more inclusive international forums. We know first-hand how important – and how difficult – that is. So much of our connection depends on Zoom, but that is limiting for many of our most grassroots members. It costs money for internet data. It requires a stable internet connection. Sometimes our calls are hybrid, held across both Zoom and WhatsApp to help members dial in. We’ve also found that small changes can make a big difference, like listing call times by country, not just by time zone. Email is also not a primary tool for many members, so we are continuing to find creative ways to move more content onto WhatsApp. We translate our calls between English, French and Spanish, but that leaves out many other constituent groups. With limited funding for translation, we are still exploring how to expand our language access, including for sign language.

MCLD in Togo, 2026

So we keep learning and we keep striving and we keep sitting with this unconventional, sometimes messy, but always intentional process. We know that the legacies of exclusion, hierarchy, and colonization are embedded throughout our sector and structures. Transforming that means transforming ourselves. We believe the future is community-led. We know it needs to be if we want to see sustainable, legitimate, accountable development. It needs to be collaborative, not competitive. It needs integrity of process, not just outcome. And we can start that future now in how we work together.