Formal education programmes conducted in educational institutions and integrated into the standard curriculum may appear to run without much additional organizing or administration. Informal programmes, whether conducted as extra-curricular activities in institutions or more regularly in a variety of venues, require a considerable amount of organisation in order to succeed. Voter educators working with the adult voting population, therefore, will require considerable organisational experience, since organisational development is a major tool in their work.
Apart from the administrative load that educators must carry, everything from managing budgets, undertaking competitive bids for products, and handling contracts to making payments, maintaining files, and writing reports, they also have to organise national or regional programmes as well as the full range of educational and special events that will comprise a part of that programme. Without giving appropriate attention to these matters, educational programmes can fail despite high quality educational design and materials.
Educators have to be able to organise venues, staff, and training teams; undertake the development of the educational programme, including its curriculum, media products, and training, educational, and informational materials; arrange production and printing processes; organise deployments of personnel and delivery and distribution of materials; arrange access to learners; and prepare a host of schedules, timelines, and implementation plans to keep everything on track. These administrative requirements present their own demands (see Administration and Management). But a strategic national programme must also confront more general organisational issues:
- the manner in which planning for the programme will take place, and the way in which the coordinating education team will align resources to achieve the objectives of the programme (see Planning and Alignment)
- the use of existing institutions, and the manner in which this will be negotiated, agreed, and financed (see Existing Institutions) and
- the establishment of specific organisational structures for any particular programme, and especially for election periods (see Election Specific Organisation)
