Government provision of social services through nonprofit organisations

Historically, nonprofit organisations in the United States have played a critical role in helping people in need by providing education, training, residential, counselling and in-kind and cash support. Today, contrary to popular belief, most nonprofit service organisations in the United States depend on government for over half of their revenues. The paper by Lipsky and Smith considers the implications of this relationship between government and nonprofit organisations for our understanding of the welfare state in advanced industrial countries. They argue that recently the American government has used nonprofit agencies to expand the boundaries of the welfare state in a host of service categories, from child abuse to domestic violence to homelessness . The result is a welfare state that is more expansive than would be the case if policymakers relied solely on the public sector. The paper also examines the effe cts of this evolving relationship on the organisational norms of nonprofit agencies. These agencies have an emphasis on particularistic responses to the individual, while the government requires an equity-based focus in which all clients are treated alike. The new funding arrangements mean increased government intrusion into the affairs of nonprofit agencies, thereby altering the character of social policy and the American welfare state. In his paper, 'A Note on Contracting as a Regime', Michael Lipsky explores the notion of a 'contracting regime' as a set of "principles, norms, rules, and decision-making procedures around which actor expectations converge in a given issue-area." Regimes, however, are not simply collections of equal and independent entities, but instead are critically influenced by one of the participating actors. Specifically, in the contracting regime , nonprofit service organisations have changed. Nonprofit human service agencies may now be more expansive than they were able to be in the past, but they are also more tied to government and more reflective of public priorities than of the community values they represented in the past. Lipsky then poses a series of questions about the relationship of government and nonprofit organisations in Australia. To what extent do government agencies articulate separate purposes , priorities and standards? Alternatively, to what extent to they endorse current activities of the voluntary agencies from which the y purchase service? To what extent do government agencies have the capacity to articulate the service needs in their sectors? To what extent can voluntary agencies take actions outside the relationship defined by the contract to obtain public funds and achieve their purposes? To what extent does government possess the capacity to enforce contracts? He suggests that in Australia policymakers have gone far to achieve the hegemony of government over voluntary agencies in service delivery through contracting , but many believe that in selected instances there is still considerable ground to be covered.Note on contracting as a regime and its possible relevance to Australia / Micahel Lipsky -- Government provision of social services through nonprofit organisations / Michael Lipsky and Steven Rathgeb Smit

Mapping State Cultural Policy: The State of Washington

State-level funding for the arts, humanities, heritage, and allied forms of culture is an important source of financial support, dwarfing the aid provided by the National Endowment for the Arts. This investigation, underwritten by the Pew Charitable Trusts, shows that states support culture through policies and programs scattered across state government and through means that go beyond direct funding

Theorizing hybridity : institutional logics, complex organizations, and actor identities : the case of nonprofits

We propose a novel approach to theorizing hybridity in public and nonprofit organizations. The concept of hybridity is widely used to describe organizational responses to changes in governance, but the literature seldom explains how hybrids arise or what forms they take. Transaction cost and organizational design literatures offer some solutions, but lack a theory of agency. We use the institutional logics approach to theorize hybrids as entities that face a plurality of normative frames. Logics provide symbolic and material elements that structure organizational legitimacy and actor identities. Contradictions between institutional logics offer space for them to be elaborated and creatively reconstructed by situated agents. We propose five types of organizational hybridity – segmented, segregated, assimilated, blended, and blocked. Each type is theoretically derived from empirically observed variations in organizational responses to institutional plurality. We develop propositions to show how our approach to hybridity adds value to academic and policy-maker audiences

Identifying and Defining the Dimensions of Community Capacity to Provide a Basis for Measurement

Although community capacity is a central concern of community development experts, the concept requires clarification. Because of the potential importance of community capacity to health promotion, the Division of Chronic Disease Control and Community Intervention, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), convened a symposium in December 1995 with the hope that a consensus might emerge regarding the dimensions that are integral to community capacity. This article describes the dimensions that the symposium participants suggested as central to the construct, including participation and leadership, skills, resources, social and interorganizational networks, sense of community, understanding of community history, community power, community values, and critical reflection. The dimensions are not exhaustive but may serve as a point of departure to extend and refine the construct and to operationalize ways to assess capacity in communities.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/67070/2/10.1177_109019819802500303.pd

What Determines the Formal Versus Relational Nature of Local Government Contracting?

Meeyoung Lamothe is currently an assistant professor at the University of Oklahoma. Her research interests include local alternative service delivery arrangements, social service contracting, and nonprofit management. Her recent publications may be found in the Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, International Journal of Public Administration, and American Review of Public Administration.Yeshttps://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/manuscript-submission-guideline