For the ILF it basically boils down to a few issues.
First, we give away a lot of stuff to our pilots and advertise that we do as part of our recruitment spiel. Ships, equipment, ammo, etc.
Each of these used to be in their own hangar appropriately labeled and easy to find. With the exception of the ships, they were open to everyone and people could just go find what they wanted. Individually, the modules were not worth much but we built up a huge stockpile over the years. Then, about two years ago, a guy who had been in the corp about a month committed suicide in-game. His character was gone. And then we realized that all the hangars had been emptied. The total loss was probably about half a billion isk worth of T1 gear.
So we changed the configuration to minimize loss. Each division got its own hangar to deposit all of their own stuff into. This became a problem because not every division had the same stuff in its hangar and if pilots couldn't find what they needed, they had to find someone from another division to look in their hangars and see if they had it. It was such a hassle that people stopped using the hangars.
So we changed the configuration in an attempt to improve usability. Rather than dividing the hangars by division, we divided them by rank. The newest players had access to the least amount of gear and the stuff was the lowest end quality. As you moved up, you got access to more and better stuff. This turned out to be a nightmare to administrate and didn't make the usability any better.
That's where we're at now and with an influx of new pilots, I've got people asking for a hangar system revamp. Sometimes I really hate being the boss.