High-Performance Partnerships - National Academy of Public ...

TABLE 2-1
SECTOR DIFFERENCES
Public Nonprofit Business
Prime Motivation Public good Mission Profit
Prime Decision-Makers Elected Officials Board of Owners/CEO
Directors/CEO
Accountable to Public Donors Owners
Funding source Taxpayers Donors/contractors Customers
Degree of public influence Great Moderate Limited
whom they are accountable, and who makes
decisions. These distinctions are summarized
in Table 2-1.
The sectors offer different strengths to a partnership.
Nonprofits contribute their mission orientation,
expertise, and community trust. The
business sector offers resources and entrepreneurial
expertise. The public sector contributes
significant resources, as well as its sense of the
“community good.” Not every organization will
exactly fit this stereotype, but these observations
are generally consistent with sector leader
polling across the country (Pew).
Numerous forces cause the sectors’ traditional
distinctions to blur. 1 Some nonprofits and
businesses provide services once exclusively
associated with the public sector, such as jails,
public transportation, and welfare. The public
and nonprofit sectors are becoming more businesslike
in their focus on customer service,
operation efficiency, and bottom line results.
Highlighted below are some of the economic
and social pressures that are encouraging sectors
to perform better and work together.
TRENDS SUPPORTING
PERFORMANCE-BASED
PARTNERSHIPS
Numerous trends are forcing the public, business,
and nonprofit sectors to continually
assess how they do business. These trends
include devolution, performance-based
reform, collaboration, and customer expectations
in the Internet age.
DEVOLUTION: DOING
MORE WITH LESS 2
Devolution decentralizes historically federal
responsibilities to lower levels of government.
Funding may or may not accompany this shift.
Begun primarily in the 1980s, devolution was
premised on the belief that state and local governments
can deliver social services more
effectively if they were given the responsibility
and flexibility to do so.
In 1981, the federal government consolidated
57 categorical grant programs into nine larger,
more flexible block grants. Decreased federal
spending accompanied the block grants so
they arrived at the states with less money.
Those most effected were Medicaid, food
stamps, welfare, employment, and job training
recipients, as were children in school lunch
and disability programs. Devolution continued
into the next decade as welfare reform legislation,
specifically the Personal Responsibility
and Work Opportunity Act of 1996, gave flexibility
to states to design their own implementation
plans. At the same time, the law set new
limits on how long families could receive food
stamps and welfare payments. In addition, the
nation’s commitment to the arts was tied to
devolution; Congress required that 40 percent
of federal appropriations for the arts be directed
to state arts agencies (Coble 1999).
1. The Three Sector Initiative, sponsored by national public, private, and nonprofit sector organizations, has produced an especially insightful report
that discusses these and other trends in greater detail (Fosler).
2. Major portions of this section are reprinted from Public/Nonprofit Sector High-performance Partnerships: Resource Guide. National Academy of
Public Administration, 2001.
25 Powering the Future: High-Performance Partnerships