An organization is a group of people who work together toward a shared purpose with structure and coordination. Your school is an organization where teachers, staff, and students work together to help everyone learn. A hospital is an organization dedicated to caring for sick and injured people. The Boy Scouts, the Red Cross, and NASA are all organizations, each with different goals and ways of working.

What makes something an organization is having structure and coordination among its members. A crowd watching fireworks is just a group of people. But when those same people join the local fire department, with captains, schedules, training sessions, and equipment, they become an organization. Someone has to lead, others take on certain roles, and everyone understands how their part contributes to the whole.

The word can also mean the act of organizing itself: the organization of your backpack, your closet, or a big event like a school carnival. Good organization means everything has its place and purpose. When you hear someone praised for their “organizational skills,” it means they're good at arranging things logically and keeping track of details.

Organizations can be tiny (a neighborhood lemonade stand run by three friends with a plan) or enormous (the United Nations, which coordinates work between countries worldwide). What matters is that people have agreed to work together in an orderly way to accomplish something they couldn't do alone.