Government–nonprofit partnership: a defining framework

Abstract

Partnership has emerged as an increasingly popular approach to privatization and government–nonprofit relations generally. While in principle it offers many advantages, there is no consensus on what it means and its practice varies. Following a review of partnership literature, the article refines the partnership concept, developing two definitional dimensions: mutuality and organization identity. Based on these dimensions, partnership is defined on a relative scale and is distinguished from other relationship types: contracting, extension, and co‐optation or gradual absorption. Examples of each are provided. The model enables actors to assess their relative tolerance for partnership approaches, and provides a common language among potential partners. Linking its defining dimensions to partnership's value‐added assists partners to advocate for partnership approaches from an instrumental as well as normative perspective. The model and inter‐organizational relationship matrix can inform continuing theory building and practical experimentation both to refine defining dimensions and indicators of partnership practice, and to enhance responsiveness to partners' expectations of partnership. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Partnerships and the Good-Governance Agenda: Improving Service Delivery Through State–NGO Collaborations

“…Involving NGOs in social-service delivery was thus argued to be a good solution: compared with the private sector, NGOs were viewed as driven by ideals instead of profitrelated concerns; they were also expected to be participatory, democratic, bottom-up, and consequently effective in developing innovative localized approaches to development (Bano 2012;Hulme and Edwards 1997). This push toward combining state and NGO efforts to improve service delivery was thus also closely tied to the good-governance agenda; NGO involvement was believed to enhance the participation of common citizens in the planning, implementation, and monitoring of state-run socialservice delivery projects (Brinkerhoff 2002(Brinkerhoff , 2003.…”

“…To date, however, we struggle to find examples where donor efforts have been able to cultivate embedded partnerships between state and non-state actors to improve provision of basic social services to the poor on a sustainable basis (Teamey 2007). Despite growing studies of co-production arrangements under the rubric of synergy, co-production, collaboration, and partnerships (Brinkerhoff 2002;Coston 1998), we still know little about what factors enable NGOs and the state to turn a routine co-production arrangement into an embedded partnership for effective social-service delivery for the poor.…”

The universal common good: faith‐based partnerships and sustainable development

“…Donor A operates at more of a distance and does not have a physical presence in Nigeria, and as a result was seen as supporting sustainability. However, respondents, even the most critical, readily acknowledged the excellent work that Donor C was doing in terms of HIV/AIDS, and an output orientated analysis (the 'actor' perspective of Van Huijstee et al, 2007) following the approach set out by Brinkerhoff (2002aBrinkerhoff ( , 2002b would yield a much more positive picture of partnership between Donor C and the diocese, as indeed was witnessed by respondents at the diocesan level. Donor C does have a strong physical presence in Nigeria and this, along with its international track record of success, was largely responsible for levering the funds from USAID.…”

“…Within the 'actor' perspective of Van Huijstee et al (2007), Brinkerhoff (2002aBrinkerhoff ( , 2002b provides a more 'goal achievement' analysis of partnership. This follows from a reasonable assumption that partnership is of little use…”

A Typology for the Relationship Between Local Governments and NPOs in Welfare State Regimes: The Belgian case revisited

“…Such typologies proved to be excellent frameworks to capture some of the systematic variations in government-NPO relationships into idealtypical categories. Amongst the most cited typologies are for example the 4C's model of Adil Najam (2000), the complementary, supplementary and adversarial lenses of Dennis Young (2000), the work of McLaughlin and Osborne on community governance in the UK (2003); and the refinement of government-NPO partnerships by Jennifer Brinkerhoff (Najam 2000;Young 2000;Brinkerhoff 2002;McLaughlin and Osborne 2003). A particularly interesting framework, for the purposes of our study, was developed by Stein Kuhnle and Per Selle (1990) in order to study the nature of the government-NPO relationships in their home country Norway.…”