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

eform to establish some form of results-based
budgeting and to require agencies to report
associated performance outcomes.
The American State Administrators Project
surveyed 1,200 state administrators on their
actions to implement proposals related to
Gaebler and Osborne’s principles. Although
the principles primarily concern management
reforms, three specifically relate to performance-based
partnerships between public agencies
and nonprofit organizations: missiondriven
strategic planning projects, privatization
of major programs, and benchmarks for
measuring program outcomes and results.
Nearly 80 percent of the survey respondents
indicated that they had fully or partially implemented
mission-driven strategic planning
projects, and a quarter said they had done so
for major program privatization. Meanwhile,
62 percent reported that they were at various
stages in benchmarking for measuring outcomes
(Brudney et al. 1999). These strategies
can provide the force for outcome-focused
cross-sector partnerships that increase the likelihood
of achieving results.
At the local level, management reform trends
are similar, though not as widespread.
Detailed survey data indicate that 38 percent of
responding cities of more than 25,000 residents
used performance measures. 5 This practice
is more prevalent in larger cities; half of
those cities with populations of 100,000 to
249,999 reported using performance measures,
as did three-quarters of cities of 250,000 or
more. Further, the approach is used more frequently
in cities with a council-manager form
of government than those with a mayor-council
system (Poister and Streib 1999). County
level governments have embraced new public
management reforms, as well. A 1998 survey
of counties with populations of 50,000 or
more indicated that approximately 34 percent
used some type of performance measurement
(Berman and Xiao-Hu Wang 2000).
For the most part, public/nonprofit relationships
have been based on grant agreements
and vendor contracts. From child and foster
care to health care and job training, providers
were held accountable for units of service
Historically, the City of Richmond underwrote
the costs of community development corporations
because they worked in distressed neighborhoods.
In Neighborhoods in Bloom, the
emphasis shifted to funding specific outcomes.
Success is determined by the number of housing
units produced and overall neighborhood
improvement as measured by increased housing
values and crime and blight reduction.
TK Somanath and David Sacks,
Neighborhoods in Bloom (Richmond)
delivered, not for long-term outcomes or
results in local neighborhoods and families.
More recently, however, demands for accountability
have increased. Agencies and organizations
report outcome goals that focus on the
qualitative impact of the service. Examples
include: Did job placement trainees develop
marketable skills as evidenced by sustained
employment? Did rates of preventable diseases
decrease among families that participated in
health education programs?
COLLABORATION:
THE THING TO DO
Emphasizing performance and maximizing
limited resources have led the public and nonprofit
sectors to explore new ways of working
together. Legislation and public policies also
have encouraged partnerships. In short, collaboration
has become “the thing to do.”
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban
Development’s Continuum of Care program
requires that homeless service providers plan
and submit federal funding applications
together. The urban and rural empowerment
zone/enterprise projects are explicitly designed
to leverage government funds and business
sector investments for community economic
5. The response rate to this survey was 57 percent, or 695 out of 1,218 senior officials.
27 Powering the Future: High-Performance Partnerships