NON-PROFIT AND GRANTS: TUTORIAL SERVICE

Non-Profit and Grants: Tutorial Service



Non-Profit and Grants: Tutorial Service

Our understanding of how nonprofit organizations (NPOs) relate to government has come a long way in that we now know that the nature of interactions between the two are not just diverse but vary over time and among different fields of service. This diversity and complexity in relations between the two is expressed in a vast array of typologies developed by various nonprofit scholars over the years (Ramanath & Ebrahim, in press). These typologies inform us that relations between NPOs and government agencies, whether federal, state, or local, may be cooperative, complementary, adversarial, confrontational, or even co-optive. Of particular concern to this chapter are predominantly cooperative relations between NPOs that are contracted by government to deliver social services. The recent preponderance of such partnership arrangements in areas such as child abuse prevention, day care, mental health, employment and training, nursing care, prison alternatives, youth development, and numerous other social service innovations begs examination of how such contractual relationships could be best managed. Are there management styles and leadership traits that are particularly conducive to navigating a nonprofit's service-delivery partnership with government?

To address this question, the chapter begins by outlining the factors that have contributed to the increasing complexity in NPO-government interactions including interactions of a contractual nature. The chapter then moves to uncovering the meaning of the term partnerships in NPO-government interactions. We then examine some of the key dilemmas for nonprofits in public service provision. These issues include board governance, managing finances, documentation, and reporting requirements while maintaining staff morale, maintaining mission effectiveness and sustaining outcomes over the long run, and retaining an advocacy voice. The details presented in this chapter draw on research conducted by various nonprofit scholars and practitioners including work of the chapter author in such interrelated areas as nonprofit governance, nonprofit-government relations, accountability and collaborative leadership.

Applying the analogy of an “ecosystem” is an effort to build a broad conceptual framework for understanding NPO-government interactions (Ramanath, 2005, p. 47). In a general sense, an ecosystem refers to organisms and the interconnected environment in which they function. The dictionary definitions of the term include “a biological community of interacting organisms and their physical environment” (Compact Oxford English Dictionary, 2003). My usage of the term is solely intended to highlight the progressively complex nature of NPO-government interactions. Like a rainforest or a coral reef, the institutional environment of NPOs is posited as emerging and evolving from relatively less to more complex forms, from sparse to more densely populated, and from low to higher degrees of interconnectedness between the components in its habitat (Ramanath, 2005, p. 47). As an ecosystem evolves, over time, into a more interconnected system of organisms so does the very composition of the species (NPOs and government organizations and all other members in a policy field, such as in health, housing, or education) that constitute it. This evolution in NPO-government relations (in the United States) is briefly reviewed in the paragraphs that ...