Organisational model

Foundation & early development

inaglobe was founded by Xavi, Alberto and Jaime in the spring of 2017. After the expedition to Mozambique, we spent a few months working independently; with eventually the support of a few early volunteers to begin building the networks and knowledge maps needed; as well as branding and marketing.

Formal volunteering programme

In 2018, as Jaime graduated, inaglobe took on a more formal organisational model. In order to give students at Imperial the opportunity to get involved and help build inaglobe alongside, and contribute to the vision, inaglobe structured a volunteering programme. In order to give volunteers full ownership, the programme was set up as for volunteers to own the whole funnel of network building and project sourcing.

inaglobe provided the volunteers with very specific training sessions that up-skilled young volunteers in relevant skillsets. Volunteers would select humanitarian partners working on topics that they found interesting, and contacted them in order to engage them over how technology may contribute to make an impact in their target areas.

In addition, there was a volunteer adhered to leadership that helped with start-up competitions and other strategic projects, such as thought leadership projects (like the series of blog posts published during this time).

Despite having some in-person meetings, inaglobe was clearly a remote and decentralised organisation from this moment. We noticed that in order to optimise the time volunteers could dedicate to inaglobe, it had to fit in seamlessly with their day-to-day life.

Specialised teams & formal structure

As the COVID19 pandemic started introducing regulations, the founders of inaglobe realised that there was both a necessity to evolve the model, to restrategise certain priorities and to also ensure continuity of engagement. Many people (volunteers, partners, students) were going to be affected by the context and it was important for the organisation to become as sensitive as possible.

We had a lot of interest from both students and young professionals that as people were asked to stay at home. At this point inaglobe became formally a volunteer-based organisation, with specialised units:

• Operations
  • Humanitarian Partnerships team: responsible for humanitarian partner identification, engagement and project sourcing.
  • Academic Partnerships team: responsible for identification of academic champions, their engagement, the introduction of project proposals into the academic space, and the support of these projects throughout their project cycles.
• Implementation team: this was a novel team responsible for supporting inaglobe spin outs into raising funds, structuring their operations and navigating the post-academic context.
• Communications team: responsible for our social media presence, blogs and put order to media assets. Furthermore, senior volunteers help structure the internal communications.
• Internal operations team: This was the less structured of the teams, and often involved strategic projects such as building an accounting system, financing and recruitment.

At its peak inaglobe conformed of 25 volunteers. This number reduced as people went back into a more normal life, but it was an opportunity to formally structure many operations and mature the project.

In 2022, a re-organisation of inaglobe took place to manage the involvement in the Unleash Plus incubation programme that inaglobe was admitted into. In order to obtain the most value from the programme, we decided to dedicate some resources into the tasks required by the programme.

During this time, after many years playing with the idea of becoming a Charity, inaglobe decided take steps towards becoming one. Firstly, re-incorporating as a Company Limited by Guarantee, introducing Charitable Articles of Association, and creating a Trustee board that would allow for good governance.

Full-time transition & volunteer fatigue

After reaching the Unleash Plus 2022 finals, inaglobe had a slight re-organisation, where several of the founders would go full-time in order to further the project. This involved very strategic projects such as the application to the Charities Commission and the raising of funds.

Engagement of volunteers twindled slowly over the years, and in 2023 you could see the slow down was very apparent. The volunteer fatigue was obvious. After years of not achieving the funding required to remunerate very obviously valuable work. inaglobe suffered deeply from the loss of highly skilled volunteers in methodologies that were not often taught anywhere else the skills that they were building. Even the most committed volunteers would have an involvement at inaglobe of approximately 3 years. On average volunteers would be involved for approximately 1–1.5 years.