This workshop was held to provide advice to the National Science Foundation regarding the organization and management of a National Ecological Observatory Network. Workshop participants enthusiastically endorsed the effort to establish an ecological observatory network that would provide the infrastructure to enhance research in all of field biology. As noted in the second workshop report, NEON will provide an integrated network of regional research platforms instrumenting the environment. Individual NEON observatories will provide resources to focus on local to regional scales. Collectively, they form a resource to address research questions at national and continental scales. NEON observatories will provide the infrastructure for the field biological research community through core data collection, instrumentation, and laboratory facilities. The specific objectives of the third workshop were to address key issues regarding: (1) the management structure of an individual observatory in the network, (2) network-level management and interactions, (3) management interactions between NSF and individual observatories, and the network as a whole, and (4) evaluation criteria for individual observatories and the network as a whole.