However, despite this recognition of the ‘organisational dimension’ there is as yet little research on NGOs in the North and South. How are they structured? What kinds of organisational problems, dilemmas and constraints do they face? What management tools and concepts can be brought to bear on these issues? These questions are important at any time, but they take on extra significance during a period in which NGOs are challenged to scale-up their impact. Whether they choose to expand their operations, work with government, move into lobbying and advocacy, or put their energies into community mobilisation on the ground, increasing the level of impact is likely to mean organisational expansion. At the very least it will involve significant organisational change. Thus scaling-up is an organisational as well as a policy question. If it is to be achieved NGOs need to understand its organisational implications. But the growing literature on NGOs largely fails to examine the organisational dimension. Those writers who have looked at organisation and management have made a valuable contribution. However, much of their work has been based on personal experience and consultancy rather than systematic research. In this chapter we attempt to begin to fill this knowledge gap and explore the implications for the scaling-up debate. To do this we will draw on two sources. The first is a recent study of organisation and management within British NGOs. The second is the accumulated knowledge of

fourteen years of study of voluntary organisations1 in the UK by the Centre for Voluntary Organisation (CVO), a research and teaching centre based at the London School of Economics. The discussion will also be informed by the wider body of British and North American literature on the voluntary sector2.