Beth Gazley

The Purpose (and Perils) of Government-Nonprofit Partnership

This study seeks to understand similarities and differences in why local governments and nonprofits choose to collaborate, particularly when those relationships are not governed by formal contracts or grants. Exchange, transaction, and resource dependence theories are used to understand the perceived advantages and disadvantages of collaboration as expressed by local government and nonprofit executives. Based on two large, comparable samples from Georgia, the analysis finds that the two sectors demonstrate a remarkable similarity in the benefits they seek from public-private partnerships, but with some key differences. The motivation to partner is driven by a desire to secure those resources most scarce for the respective sector: expertise and capacity for government, funding for nonprofits. Nonprofit executives generally exhibit a stronger undercurrent of negativity toward intersectoral partnership than do their public sector counterparts. This article discusses possible reasons for these similarities and differences and contributes to the scholarship linking capacity with organizational outcomes.

Planing to be Prepared: An Empirical Examination of the Role of Voluntary Organizations in County Government Emergency Planning

Recent governmental responses to domestic disasters have emphasized the important role played by a sometimes extensive network of decentralized, voluntary organizations in emergency response. However, we still understand very little about how local governments proactively plan to work with these private organizations. This article uses a national survey of county-level emergency planning agencies to describe the role of volunteers and voluntary organizations in local disaster planning. Employing network and collaborative theories, we model county disaster preparedness as a function of risk level, county resources, and routine and nonroutine voluntary involvement in emergency planning. We find a positive association between the level of joint planning with voluntary organizations and public managers perceptions of preparedness, even after controlling for county risk level. These findings should encourage county emergency managers to engage in stronger joint disaster planning efforts with the private voluntary sector.

Achieving the Partnership Principle in Experiential Learning: The Nonprofit Perspective

University and college experiential education takes many forms: internships, practica and other field experience, volunteerism, community service, and community-based service learning, as well as community activities attached to college courses. Given the joint involvement of university and community institutions in experiential education and the diverse motivations for encouraging student community involvement, this academic practice can be viewed through three lenses: (a) as a form of student learning, (b) as a public policy instrument to promote student civic engagement, and (c) as a service delivery tool for community organizations. Much of the research about student service learning has emphasized the first of these perspectives, examining service learning’s impact on a student’s pedagogical experience and the campus ability to support service learning. This article focuses on the nature of the partnership between campuses and community organizations. We begin with a discussion of how prior literature describes this partnership and then use generalizable community data to explore what host organizations suggest are the most useful partnership characteristics.