Report Launch: Five Years of Align – Lessons in Building Aligned Organisations

This year, Align turns five and we are releasing a new report to celebrate.

When we started this journey in 2020, our vision was to support mission-driven organisations to dream bigger, work better, and build the worlds we long for. Five years - and many hard-won lessons - later, we’re proud to mark this milestone by sharing a new report: The Aligned Organisation.

This report is a reflection on what we’ve learned through deep collaboration with organisations, movements, teams, and leaders who are navigating the challenging work of transformative change.

The Aligned Organisation: A Brown Paper explores what happens when people come together with clarity of purpose, strong relationships, and a shared political compass. It asks: What if our workplaces could be sources of healing, joy, and collective power, rather than sites of burnout or conflict? What if alignment - between values and action, strategy and structure, mission and methods - wasn’t a luxury, but a necessity?

Drawing from our work over the past five years, we outline a framework of seven elements we believe are foundational to aligned organisations: mindful individuals, strong relationships, clear mission and values, coherent identity, role clarity, sufficient infrastructure, and rooted political analysis.

We offer this report as an invitation - to reflect, to reconnect, and to reimagine how we work, lead, and organise. Whether you’re part of a grassroots group, a large NGO, a creative collective, or a philanthropic institution, we hope there’s something here that resonates with you.

Read The Aligned Organisation: A Brown Paper.

Enjoy!