Kelly LeRoux

Does Performance Measurement Improve Strategic Decision Making? Findings From a National Survey of Nonprofit Social Service Agencies

Nonprofits have encountered increased pressures for accountability and performance in recent years, both from their funding entities as well as the public. The adoption of performance measurement systems assumes that managers will use performance information to make better decisions. However, little research has focused on performance information use in the nonprofit sector. This study seeks to address this gap in the literature. Using survey data from several hundred nonprofit social service organizations in the United States, this article examines the extent to which reliance on various performance measures improves strategic decision making within nonprofit organizations. Authors find a positive relationship between the range of performance measures used by nonprofits and their level of effectiveness in strategic decision making. Other factors that also contribute to strategic decision making within nonprofits include effective governance, funding diversity, and education level of the executive director.

Institutional Ties, Transaction Costs, and External Service Production:

Analyses of local government contracting increasingly focus on understanding how the transaction costs created by service attributes limit opportunities for external service production. However, the institutional collective action framework suggests that networks among local government actors help to offset these costs for intergovernmental contracting decisions. We use data describing service production arrangements of cities in Michigan to examine the proposition that service production decisions are conditioned by the communication networks created through institutional linkages in addition to the transaction characteristics of services. We examine three different production options: (1) internal production, (2) joint or complete contracting with another government, and (3) production by a private or nonprofit organization, and find strong support for the expected role of transaction costs in these production choices. We also find that some types of networks created by institutions increase the likelihood that local governments will rely on intergovernmental service arrangements.

Performance Regimes Amidst Governance Complexity

Much of the appeal of performance measurement is explained by its image as a simple and value-neutral way to monitor and improve government. But contemporary governance is characterized by complexity. Few public officials have the luxury of directly providing relatively simple services, the context in which performance regimes work best. Instead, they must work in the context of a disarticulated state, with policy problems that cross national boundaries and demand a multi-actor response. At the same time, traditional democratic values must be honored. This article examines the tensions between performance regimes and the complexity of modern governance, identifying implications and questions for research and practice.

Explaining Local Government Cooperation on Public Works: Evidence from Michigan

In recent years, analysts have begun to study cooperation on public services among local governments. These studies often have concluded that services with scale economies are likely candidates for shared service delivery. This article contributes to the emerging literature on this topic by examining interlocal service arrangements for 10 public works services in Michigan. Despite the fact that public works exhibit substantial scale economies, many local governments do not cooperate on these services. Empirical studies of local government contracting suggest four groups of factors that may help explain why local governments opt to collaborate on public services: local economic factors, characteristics of the communities in areas adjacent to the local government, demographic characteristics of the local government, and the influence of policy and planning networks. The authors use data on the service delivery arrangements from 468 general-purpose local governments in Michigan to examine the role played by the factors in explaining interlocal cooperation on public works.

Managing Stakeholder Demands: Balancing Responsiveness to Clients and Funding Agents in Nonprofit Social Service Organizations

Nonprofit social service organizations face unique challenges in attending to the needs of their various stakeholders. This article uses data from a sample of nonprofit organizations in Michigan to examine how well nonprofits manage multiple stakeholder demands. Findings indicate that nonprofits generally balance organizational time and attention to the needs of both clients and funding agencies. However, a small percentage of nonprofits devote disproportionate time to funding agencies at the expense of client-related activities. Factors that increase this likelihood include financial dependence on for-profit corporations, a racial mismatch between the board and agency clientele, and board dominance by economic elites.

PROSPECTS FOR CENTRALIZING SERVICES IN AN URBAN COUNTY: EVIDENCE FROM EIGHT SELF-ORGANIZED NETWORKS OF LOCAL PUBLIC SERVICES

ABSTRACT: Networks of interlocal agreements (ILAs) provide a way for municipal governments in a fragmented region to cooperate on services, and these networks may be especially likely to form when local government officials are linked through interpersonal networks. Drawing on insights from Williams’ Lifestyle Model of Metropolitan Politics and Frederickson’s theory of administrative conjunctions, this paper uses network analytic methods to examine the structure of ILA networks, and to assess the impact of governing officials’ interpersonal networks on the probability of ILAs forming between cities. Forty-four local governments in the Detroit metropolitan area provide the context for this study. Our findings show that these municipalities cooperate more extensively for system maintenance functions, such as transportation infrastructure and public works. More importantly, we find that any given cluster of municipalities has an increased probability of cooperating through ILAs when their senior administrators participate in the same local professional associations. The same effects hold true for elected executives’ networking with counterparts, and for some functions, these electoral conjunctions serve as even stronger predictors of ILA usage than administrator’s networks.

The Effects of Descriptive Representation on Nonprofits’ Civic Intermediary Roles A Test of the “Racial Mismatch” Hypothesis in the Social Services Sector

Social service organizations often act as civic intermediaries for their clients by facilitating their interactions with governing systems and political processes and institutions. Theories of descriptive representation and representative bureaucracy suggest that organizations will act in ways that advance the political interests of their clients when organizational leadership is racially reflective of the clientele served. Yet little is known about the effects of racial representation on nonprofit organizational activities. To what extent can these theories explain nonprofit organizational efforts to advance the political interests of their clients? This article examines this question using data from a sample of nonprofit service agencies in Michigan. Multivariate regression is used to examine the effects of racial representation on four civic intermediary roles performed by nonprofits: political representation, education, mobilization, and assimilation. Findings suggest that nonprofits engage in these activities at higher rates when agency leadership is more racially reflective of the clientele served.

Can Nonprofit Organizations Increase Voter Turnout? Findings From an Agency-Based Voter Mobilization Experiment

Through their nonpartisan voter registration and get-out-the-vote (GOTV) activities, nonprofit human service organizations play a critical role in promoting a more inclusive democracy by engaging low-income citizens and marginalized populations in the voting process. Previous studies of nonpartisan voter mobilization have focused on the effectiveness of door-knocking and phone calls by large community organizing groups as a strategy for increasing voter turnout. However there have been no studies to date examining the effectiveness of offering voter registration and other forms of voting support at the service delivery site, a strategy described as “agency-based” voter engagement. Using a quasi-experimental design, this study addresses this gap in the literature by examining the effects of nonprofit voter mobilization efforts on increasing voter turnout. We use voter turnout data from 505 clients of seven nonprofit human service organizations in the city of Detroit collected after the 2010 elections. The findings yield strong evidence that nonprofits’ agency-based voter mobilization efforts are effective. We find that for each voting-related contact a client receives from his or her service agency, the likelihood of turnout increases by 11.1 percentage points, even after controlling for other factors known to influence voting behavior. Moreover, we find that the most effective forms of voting-related contacts are voter registration assistance and personal voting reminders. We conclude by examining the implications of these findings for nonprofits’ voter engagement efforts.

Impact of the Arts on Individual Contributions to US Civil Society

Abstract Many studies have emerged in recent years examining the impact of the arts on educational outcomes, physical and mental health outcomes, local economies, and community well-being. Yet considerably less attention has been given to the impact that participation in the arts has on social behaviour that promotes a civil society. This study seeks to remedy this gap in the literature by examining the effect that both audience-based arts participation and direct participation in the arts have on three measures of civil society. We rely on data from the General Social Survey, which offers information on the arts participation behaviour of a random sample of adults living in the USA (n = 1.341). Multivariate analysis is used to estimate the effects of audience-based arts participation as well as personal participation in the arts (creating art) on three dimensions of civil society: Civic engagement, social tolerance, and other-regarding behaviour. We find strong evidence that the arts enhance civil society. Both audience-based participation in the arts and personal participation in creating art are linked to higher levels of civic engagement, higher levels of social tolerance on some dimensions of the measure, and higher levels of other-regarding behaviour. Our findings have important implications, in that they demonstrate a strong association between the arts and individual-level social outcomes that contribute to the health of civil society.

WHO BENEFITS FROM NONPROFIT ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT? EXAMINING THE REVENUE DISTRIBUTION OF TAX‐EXEMPT DEVELOPMENT ORGANIZATIONS AMONG U.S. CITIES

ABSTRACT: Questions surrounding the distribution of benefits have served as the focus for much research on local economic development. While nonprofit community development corporations (CDCs) emerged in the 1960s as one means of redistributing economic development benefits by targeting job training and business growth programs toward the urban poor, CDCs now represent only a portion of all nonprofit economic development organizations (NEDOs) in the United States. Newer forms of these organizations have emerged in recent years, carrying out diverse economic functions. This evolution of the nonprofit economic development subsector raises a critical question: Do nonprofit economic development activities remain concentrated today in poorer cities, or do wealthier cities also have high levels of nonprofit economic development activity? This study aggregates finance data for several types of NEDOs to the city level, for all U.S. cities with population 50,000 and over, in order to examine this question. Multivariate regression is used to estimate the effects of city-level demographic, institutional, and fiscal explanations on the level of NEDO revenues per capita. The findings demonstrate that revenues from some types of NEDOs, such as CDCs, remain concentrated in higher-poverty cities. However, wealthier cities have higher concentrations of revenue generated by nonprofit business assistance organizations and nonprofit real estate organizations. This paper concludes by discussing the implications of these findings for current federal and local policies related to tax-exempt organizations.