In the last few days, Aaeru from Visual Novel Aer has been talking about plans to create Fuwanovel. As far as I can tell, this project is geared toward unifying and expanding the visual novel Fan Translation scene. You can read more about the current plans at http://visualnovelaer.wordpress.com/2012/01/28/fuwanovel-will-have-no-game-downloads , and read *much* more about it at http://forums.fuwanovel.com/index.php?/topic/10-about-fuwanovel-for-fan-translators/

I'm not sure where fan translations should go from here. Things have certainly changed since the first few completed projects (Love Hina Advance in 2002, Bloody Bride in 2003). In the last few years, we've seen a few projects become official localizations (including Kara no Shoujo and Eien no Aselia), though some collaborations did not work out.

A few companies working on video games in general have acknowledged the fan translation scene. For instance, I remember an article on Rpgamer where the people translating Front Mission for DS talked about their familiarity with the fan translation of the SNES version.

I don't know if Fuwanovel would be the right step forward. Right now, I think we have to wait and see if it gets off the ground.