Paternalistic or Participatory Governance? Examining Opportunities for Client Participation in Nonprofit Social Service Organizations

Nonprofits represent a substantial group of third-party agents that deliver public services, yet little is known about the extent to which these organizations embrace participatory governance practices. Using survey data from nonprofit social service agencies in Michigan, the author examines how these organizations provide opportunities for client participation and identifies factors that contribute to these practices. Four methods of securing client involvement are examined: participation in agency work groups, client feedback surveys, advisory boards and committees, and client service on the agency board of directors. The results indicate that government funding plays a systematic role in promoting these activities within nonprofits. These findings carry important implications for the government–nonprofit contract relationship by demonstrating that government funding shapes the practices of nonprofits in ways that promote democratic governance.     

The Challenge of Strengthening Nonprofits and Civil Society

The Winter Commission Report was centrally concerned with improving the performance of state and local governments. Since the issuance of the commission’s report in 1993, the delivery of services by state and local government has been substantially changed by the growing role of nonprofit organizations in providing public services and representing citizen interests. As a result, state and local governments and nonprofit agencies are faced with complex governance challenges. The central argument of this paper is that despite the dramatic changes in the relationship between government and nonprofit organizations in recent years, the key tenets of the Winter Commission report—the need for improved training and education, greater transparency and accountability, more emphasis on performance, and improved citizen engagement—remain deeply relevant in improving the governance of the public services in an increasingly complex policy process and service delivery system at the state and local levels.     

治理结构、运行机制、与政府关系: 非营利组织有效性分析--浙江省义乌市玩具行业协会个案

非营利组织的治理结构、运行机制、与政府关系对于非营利组织的发展特别重要.行业协会是非营利组织的一种形态.通过分析浙江省义乌市玩具行业协会个案,运用制度变迁和合作博弈理论,剖析协会的治理结构、运行机制、与政府关系,探讨非营利组织的有效性.     

Organizational Characteristics and Funding Environments: A Study of a Population of United Way–Affiliated Nonprofits

This study examines a population of United Way–affiliated nonprofit organizations in Massachusetts (1) to test hypotheses generated by previous research on relationships between government funding and specific nonprofit organizational characteristics, (2) to compare differences in organizational characteristics between nonprofits receiving higher percentages of revenues from the United Way and from government sources, and (3) to explore associations between government funding and United Way and underexamined characteristics, including use of commercial income and racial diversity of organizational membership. The study supports previous research on the relationship between government funding and nonprofit characteristics, with one notable exception—less administrative complexity was associated with higher percentages of government funding. The study also finds differences in organizational characteristics between nonprofits with higher proportions of government funding and those with higher percentages of United Way funding, including organization size, number of board members, administrative complexity, use of volunteers, and the racial diversity of boards, staff, and volunteers.     

How does government funding affect nonprofits' program spending? Evidence from international development organizations

Under the new governance models, the scope of government funding of nonprofit activities in service delivery and policy implementation is extensive. There is a long‐standing concern that government funding may compromise nonprofit operations and lead to unintended consequences. This research examines the concern by exploring the effect of government funding on nonprofits' spending on programs and services. Existing theories and empirical evidence propose competing arguments concerning the relationship between government funding and nonprofits' program spending. Using a 20‐year panel dataset of international development nonprofits registered with the United States Agency for International Development, we find that nonprofits receiving more government funding spend significantly higher proportions of their organizational resources on development programs. Government funding seems to increase nonprofits' program spending and to make them more focused on their mission‐related activities.     

The Power of Nonprofits: Mechanisms for Nonprofit Policy Influence

The dramatic increase in public funding for nonprofit organizations has raised concerns about the potential disadvantages of a nonprofit sector that is too reliant on government funding. Using nonprofits to deliver public programs also presents risks for the public sector, but the question of nonprofit policy influence is largely absent from discussions of public–nonprofit service collaborations. The motivation for this article stems from the contradiction between the perceived weakness of publicly funded nonprofits and their potential for policy influence. This research asks, how do nonprofits exert policy influence? Using a grounded theory approach, the research draws on the attitudes and experiences of professionals and elected officials involved in policy making and policy implementation in the area of low‐income housing. The findings indicate a variety of mechanisms through which the government–nonprofit relationship can strengthen the power of nonprofit organizations, sometimes while weakening their government counterparts.     

In Search of True Public Arts Support

Most of the debate over government arts support focuses on direct subsidies to nonprofit arts organizations. In this article, however, I show that a much larger amount of public sector money comes from indirect aid, in the form of tax revenues forgone on tax-deductible contributions by individuals. Specifically, every dollar in direct federal arts funding is accompanied by about $14 in indirect aid. Analysis of the 1996 General Social Survey shows that private givers and supporters of direct government aid fit different demographic profiles, meaning that direct and indirect funding owe to distinct constituencies. These findings lead to a number of implications for nonprofit and public arts managers.

It is sometime proper for the state to encourage and protect dishonorable but useful professions, without those who exercise them being more highly considered for that.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau ¹

     

Does government funding alter nonprofit governance? Evidence from New York City nonprofit contractors

Government contracting has raised a collection of issues with respect to adequate oversight and accountability. This paper explores one avenue through which contracting agencies may achieve these tasks: through the governance practices of the contractor's board. Oversight and monitoring are a board's key responsibilities, and influencing a board's practices is one way a governmental agency can help to insure quality performance. Agencies could thus use both their selection process and their post‐contracting power to influence board practice. Using a new, rich data set on the nonprofit contractors of New York City, a series of hypotheses were tested on the relationship between government funding and board practices. Significant differences were found to exist in board practices as a function of government funding levels, differences that mark a shift of energy away from some activities (i.e., traditional board functions, such as fund‐raising) towards others (financial monitoring and advocacy). This suggests that government agencies may indeed use their contracting choices with an eye to particular governance practices. This increased emphasis on such activities appears to crowd out other activities, and is not unambiguously to the benefit of nonprofit board governance. © 2002 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.     

Organizational Response to Changing Demands: Predicting Behavior in Donor Networks

The integration of resource dependence theory and a network perspective results in a parsimonious “strategic response model” for the organizational responses of exit, voice, loyalty, and adjustment. Four cases illustrate the model's application to nonprofit organizations by focusing on relations with a government aid agency that switched funding priorities. The model helps explain why networks of recipients of funding may change over time and predicts organizational responses to changing demands from resource providers.     

The New Governance: Practices and Processes for Stakeholder and Citizen Participation in the Work of Government

Leaders in public affairs identify tools and instruments for the new governance through networks of public, private, and nonprofit organizations. We argue the new governance also involves people—the tool makers and tool users—and the processes through which they participate in the work of government. Practitioners are using new quasi-legislative and quasi-judicial governance processes, including deliberative democracy, e-democracy, public conversations, participatory budgeting, citizen juries, study circles, collaborative policy making, and alternative dispute resolution, to permit citizens and stakeholders to actively participate in the work of government. We assess the existing legal infrastructure authorizing public managers to use new governance processes and discuss a selection of quasi-legislative and quasi-judicial new governance processes in international, federal, state, and local public institutions. We conclude that public administration needs to address these processes in teaching and research to help the public sector develop and use informed best practices.     

Managerial Networking in Nonprofit Organizations: The Impact of Networking on Organizational and Advocacy Effectiveness

Public management scholars are interested in the ways that public managers can improve the performance of their organizations and, by extension, public service outcomes. However, public sector outcomes are increasingly being produced by nonprofit organizations. Nonprofits have encountered increased pressures to improve effectiveness in recent years, both from their funding entities and from the public. A growing body of public management research has shown that managerial networking can pay dividends for organizational effectiveness, yet no studies to date have considered the effects of managerial networking on nonprofit effectiveness. This is the first study to apply the basic elements of Meier and O'Toole's model to the nonprofit sector. Using survey data from a random sample of 314 nonprofit human service organizations in 16 U.S. states, the authors explore the frequency of various networking relationships on organizational and advocacy effectiveness. The findings reveal that political networking increases advocacy effectiveness and community networking increases organizational effectiveness.     

Out of tune or well tempered? How competition agencies direct the orchestrating state

This article analyzes the impact competition agencies have on the orchestrating role of states in domestic private regulation. I argue that these agencies can significantly affect interactions in the governance triangle through the way they apply a “logic of the market” to evaluate agreements between firms. The regulatory framework of European Union competition law has increasingly constrained the ability of firms to take into account broader interests when making agreements to foster social objectives. This logic of the market clashes with the ever‐increasing emphasis governments place on enabling firms to enter into such agreements. I analyze this tension through a case study of a pact of Dutch retailers to collectively introduce higher animal welfare standards for poultry. Using regulatory network analysis I trace the governance interactions between the governance triangle on the one hand (government, non‐governmental organizations, and firms), and the Dutch competition authority, Autoriteit Consument en Markt (ACM) and the European Commission on the other hand. Attempts by the Dutch government to instruct the ACM to be more lenient toward private regulation were blocked twice by the European Commission. As a result, the Dutch government abandoned private regulation as the preferred mode and proposed a bottom‐up process that would generate public regulation as a way to avoid conflict with competition policy. I argue that paradoxically enough the intervention of these non‐majoritarian competition agencies against the “will” of the governance triangle has potentially increased the effectiveness and legitimacy of orchestration processes.     

Nonprofit Policy Advocacy under Authoritarianism

Despite the increasing volume and significance of research on nonprofit advocacy, most studies have focused on the phenomenon only in Western countries. This article expands the scope of the literature by examining the advocacy activities of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in authoritarian China. This article focuses on three aspects of advocacy behavior: advocacy investment and use of insider and outsider tactics. Data analyses of an original nationwide survey of 267 environmental NGOs and semistructured interviews with 30 highlight how resource and institutional factors—government funding, government affiliation, foundation funding, and peer collaborations—shape NGO advocacy in China. The findings also suggest ways in which institutional actors may enhance NGOs’ capacity for policy advocacy.     

Taking Nonprofit Intermediaries Seriously: A Middle‐Range Theory for Implementation Research

The federal government often works through nonprofit intermediaries to reach and empower communities in the United States. One increasingly popular policy strategy is to offer grant funding to intermediary organizations in an effort to strengthen communities. Funded intermediaries are tasked with building the capacity of faith‐based and community organizations at the local level, but the policy theory that informs these programs does not specify how these capacity‐building efforts will lead to stronger communities. Missing is a middle‐range implementation theory that links inputs to community‐level changes through the actions of an intermediary. Derived from empirical case study evidence using process‐tracing analysis, the theory of the community‐integrated intermediary posited in this article helps fill that gap.     

Managing in the Regulatory Thicket: Regulation Legitimacy and Expertise

Although the influence of government regulation on organizations is undeniable, empirical research in this field is scarce. This article investigates how the understanding of and attitudes toward government regulation among public, nonprofit, and for‐profit managers affect organizational performance, using U.S. nursing homes as the empirical setting. Findings suggest that managers’ perceptions of regulation legitimacy—views of regulation fairness, inspectors’ effectiveness, and internal utility of the mandates—positively affect service quality. Subgroup analysis suggests that managers’ views of regulation matter in nonprofit and for‐profit organizations but not in public organizations. In nonprofit homes, performance declines when managers report higher regulatory expertise—better knowledge of the regulatory standards. In for‐profit facilities, frequent communication with regulators lowers quality. These findings suggest that the regulated entities’ views of government regulation are central to their success, which necessitates improvements in the regulatory process.     

Bending the arc of nonprofit leadership toward justice: Impacts of racial representation and organizational publicness on diversifying executive leadership

Nonprofits are critical partners in the delivery of government-funded human services in the US, but there is evidence of a persistent racial leadership gap in the sector, whereby Black and Latino Executive Directors are dramatically under-represented. Why does this gap persist despite increased attention to this issue in recent years? And what organizational and community-level factors do shape the likelihood that nonprofits will hire a Black or Latino Executive Director (ED)? We answer these questions through a mixed-methods sequential design, drawing on survey data from 606 nonprofit organizations across the US, along with interview data from 12 nonprofit executives representing expert informants in the Chicago metro area. Consistent with theories of representation and publicness, we find demographic representation at the board level positively linked to the hiring of a Black or Latino ED, but government funding has inconsistent effects. We further elaborate on these findings through our qualitative data.     

Trust but verify? Voluntary regulation programs in the nonprofit sector

In this article we examine how information problems can cause agency slippages and lead to governance failures in nonprofit organizations. Drawing on the principal–agent literature, we provide a theoretical account of an institutional mechanism, namely, voluntary regulation programs, to mitigate such slippages. These programs seek to impose obligations on their participants regarding internal governance and use of resources. By joining these programs, nonprofit organizations seek to differentiate themselves from nonparticipants and signal to their principals that they are deploying resources as per the organizational mandate. If principals are assured that agency slippages are lower in program participants, they might be more likely to provide the participants with resources to deliver goods and services to their target populations. However, regulatory programs for nonprofit organizations are of variable quality and, in some cases, could be designed to obscure rather than reveal information. We outline an analytical framework to differentiate the credible clubs from the “charity washes.” A focus on the institutional architecture of these programs can help to predict their efficacy in reducing agency problems.     

Loan delinquency in community lending organizations: Case studies of neighborworks organizations

Abstract

This article reports on qualitative data gathered through interviews conducted in 1996 with key leadership and staff from 13 community lending organizations. Loan servicing and collection procedures within the organizations were examined. Findings suggest that several organizational factors of nonprofit lenders are related to their loan delinquency rates: social networks, business culture, funding sources, composition of the board and loan committees, staff structure, loan intake, and collection tools.

The study also finds that the nonprofit sector's institutional environment and its partnership with the private sector in a mutually beneficial process influence the loan delinquency rate. More specifically, active participation of local bankers in NeighborWorks¹ loan committees, diverse funding sources (from both the public and private sectors), and a diffusion of business practices through dense social networks are related to NeighborWorks’ loan servicing and collection policy and procedures. These factors in turn influence NeighborWorks’ rehabilitation loan delinquency rates.     

How nonprofits grow: a model.

When nonprofit organizations operate in a field of service that might otherwise be provided by government or by for-profit organizations, such as schools, hospitals, or museums, their decisions on the type and amount of services to be delivered are motivated by factors that are quite distinctive. Because they must operate on a break-even basis with revenues raised on a voluntary basis, nonprofit organizations typically take on activities from which they derive no satisfaction in order to subsidize activities that they regard as of higher value. As a result, the mix of services they offer and the charges they impose will generally be quite different from those of a government institution or a for-profit organization.     

Rethinking Security: Organizational Fragility in Extreme Events

Providing public security is a fundamental function of government. As the class and degree of threat vary, government agencies must adapt to changing conditions or risk failing their basic mission. The events of September 11, 2001, illustrated the limits of governmental performance in identifying and interrupting actions intended to harm innocent citizens. These events are examined against the resources, range, and limits of governmental capacity to adapt to the emerging threat of terrorism, and an alternative perspective on administrative performance as a complex adaptive system is proposed. This perspective redefines the search for public security as a dynamic process that balances mechanisms of control with processes of information search, exchange, and feedback among public, private, and nonprofit organizations and is supported by a well–designed information infrastructure. The article concludes that the search for public security is an interactive learning process that, while guided by public organizations, must involve responsible participation by private and nonprofit organizations as well as an informed citizenry.