1. Organisation, Funding and Governance

The Organisation chapter examines how NRENs are staffed, how they are funded, and how their governance frameworks are documented. The community remains highly diverse — large national networks alongside young, lean organisations — and 2025 marks visible movement toward more sustainable financing models alongside continued government dependence.

1.1 Staffing

Seventeen NRENs reported 2025 staffing, totalling 859 staff across the community. The reporting cohort spans an order of magnitude in scale — from compact teams of 5–10 people up to AARnet's 267 — and three survey waves of data make the trajectory of each NREN visible. Across the 15 NRENs with comparable 2018 baseline data, total community staffing has grown by 146% over the seven years, with DrukREN's 44× expansion (3 → 131 staff) the headline transformation of the cohort. CERNET and NKN, which operate at a different scale from the rest, do not report into the staff series. The chart below traces each NREN's three-wave journey on a logarithmic axis: a slate arrow for the 2018→2020 segment, a sage arrow for 2020→2025.

Two non-monotonic stories are worth highlighting. PERN reports 20 → 65 → 36, a sharp rise then a partial pullback that may reflect both organisational restructuring and post-pandemic re-counting. KOREN shows 16 → 27 → 16, a similar pattern at smaller scale. BdREN traces the opposite shape — 54 → 36 → 105 — a dip in 2020, then a near-tripling off that low to 105 by 2025. These oscillations matter: they remind the reader that even single-number 2025 snapshots conceal substantial multi-year volatility for some NRENs.

1.2 Workforce Gender Composition

Where NRENs reported a male/female breakdown for 2025, women comprise approximately 29% of the combined workforce — and the distribution varies notably across the community. ErdemNET (Mongolia) sits at exactly 50% gender parity, with DrukREN, ThaiREN, LEARN and KOREN in the 44–47% range. At the other end, BdREN and CamREN report under 10%. The pattern broadly mirrors global research-networking benchmarks and reinforces the relevance of the region's capacity-building initiatives aimed at women network engineers.

1.3 Funding Models and Revenue Composition

Looking across the three survey waves at the consistent panel of 13 NRENs that reported a revenue breakdown in 2018, 2020 and 2025, two trends stand out. Government funding has stayed close to 60% of community revenue throughout — 61% in 2018 and 2020, easing to 57% in 2025. The most striking change is the growth of Client Institution funding — from 23% in 2018 to 33% in 2020 and 35% in 2025 — pointing to a maturing community moving steadily beyond pure grant dependence. Donation revenue, first tracked in 2020, has also emerged as a small but growing stream (3% in 2020 to 7% by 2025), while the residual 'Others' category has fallen sharply — from 16% in 2018 to 3% in 2020 and under 1% in 2025 — as previously-bundled sources have been reclassified into the named categories. This community-wide Others→Client shift is driven by four NRENs in particular: NREN (Nepal), BdREN, HARNET and LEARN — each of which reclassified revenue previously bundled under Others into the properly-tracked Client Institutions category as their financial reporting matured.

The per-NREN view for 2025, shown separately for capital and operating expenditure, reveals considerable variation across the community. Most NRENs report the same funding mix for both CAPEX and OPEX — but four (NREN/Nepal, REANNZ, IDREN, PERN) report different splits, indicating that different funding sources cover capital projects versus day-to-day operations. Four NRENs are fully Client-funded on both sides: BdREN, CERNET, HARNET and LEARN — the strict self-sufficient cluster. REANNZ is fully Client-funded on the CAPEX side but Government and Others on the OPEX side, an interesting hybrid model worth examining. At the other end, nine NRENs report 100% Government funding for both CAPEX and OPEX. The presence of a self-sufficient cluster points to a maturing community moving steadily beyond grant dependence.

1.4 Standards and Policies

Formal policies define how an NREN operates, what it promises its users, and how it manages risk. The 2025 survey covered eight policy areas. Of the 19 NRENs reporting, the breadth of documented policy frameworks varies considerably — from organisations with most areas documented to those still formalising the basics.

Connectivity and Usage policies are the most universally documented, reflecting the operational core of every NREN. Service-level-agreement, procurement and work-from-home policies form a middle tier, each documented by between four and six NRENs in ten, while vehicle-usage and environmental policies remain the rarest — pointing to an obvious development area for the community.