Are Public Service Nonprofit Boards Meeting Their Responsibilities?

• Author: Robert D. Herman
• Published date: 01 May 2009
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-6210.2009.01986.x
• Date: 01 May 2009

Public Documents 387

Nancy Roberts, Editor

Robert D. Herman

University of Missouri–Kansas City

Are Public Service Nonprof‌i t Boards Meeting  eir

R esponsibilities?

Public

Documents

Robert D. Herman is a professor in the

Department of Public Affairs at the Henry

W. Bloch School of Business and Public

A dministration, University of Missouri–

K ansas City. His research interests center on

nonprof‌i t governance, nonprof‌i t executive

leadership, and nonprof‌i t organizational

effectiveness. He is the author of

Executive

Leadership in Nonprof‌i t Organization

and

the editor of

The Jossey-Bass Handbook of

Nonprof‌i t Leadership Management.

E-mail: HermanR@umkc.edu

Public service nonprof‌i t organizations have long been

“partners” in the delivery of public services. Such

nonprof‌i t organizations are governed by boards, typically

composed of citizen volunteers, that are expected to meet

substantial standards of accountability and performance.

Previous research has raised questions about how

well such boards are meeting their responsibilities. A

2007 Urban Institute study, based on the f‌i rst large

representative sample of U.S. public benef‌i t nonprof‌i ts,

provides important evidence about the extent to which

nonprof‌i t boards are meeting certain accountability and

performance standards.

Public Document Discussed:

Francie Ostrower, Nonprof‌i t Governance in the

United States: Findings on Performance and Account-

ability from the First Representative National Study

(W ashington, DC: Urban Institute Center on Nonprof‌i ts

and Philanthropy, 2007). http://www.urban.org/url.

cfm?ID=411479.

 at public service nonprof‌i t organizations, referred

to as 501(c)(3) charitable nonprof‌i ts in the U.S. tax

code, have long been important participants in the

delivery of government services is widely recognized

by public administration practitioners and scholars.

 is phenomenon, often described as “third-party

government” (e.g., Kennedy 2006), derives from

government contracting with

nonprof‌i t charities to deliver a

wide variety of services. While

government of‌f‌i cials often assess

the organizational practices and

characteristics of the nonprof‌i ts

with which they contract in an

ef‌f ort to ensure timely, ef‌f‌i cient,

and ef‌f ective contract perform-

ance, probably few govern-

ments pay much attention to

the behaviors of the boards of

directors of those organizations.

Nonetheless, both U.S. law and

widely accepted norms about

nonprof‌i ts hold that boards of directors are ultimately

responsible for the organizations they oversee. If fraud

or waste occurs, boards are accountable (or are sup-

posed to be). If the services delivered do not match

what was contracted, then boards are not performing

as they should.  us, the actual role that boards play

in governing nonprof‌i t organizations needs to be more

fully understood. Of course, the fact that nearly all

charitable boards, even the many that are not govern-

ment contractors, are composed of unpaid citizens

who are acting to promote some public good also casts

board members as prime contributors to civil society

and the building of social capital (Clemens 2006).

Research on nonprof‌i t boards has been accumulat-

ing over the last four decades (see Ostrower and

Stone 2006 for a thorough review of that literature),

though nearly all of that research is based on rather

limited samples of boards, typically from one U.S.

m etropolitan area, often nonrandom.  e Center on

Nonpro f‌i ts and Philanthropy at the Urban Institute

secured foundation funding to conduct the f‌i rst

national, representative sample study of U.S. public

benef‌i t nonprof‌i t boards.  e report, authored by

Francie Ostrower, a longtime board researcher

(e.g., see Ostrower 2002), both conf‌i rms conclusions

based on prior research and adds important new

u nderstandings.

 e study used a stratif‌i ed

(by size) random sample of

nonprof‌i ts drawn from a

database of IRS Form 990 f‌i l-

ings.  e IRS Form 990 is the

informational “tax return” that

501(c)(3) organizations with

annual revenues of $25,000 or

more are required to f‌i le. While

some unknown but apparently

quite large number of orga-

nizations (see Smith 1997) is

not included in this (or any)

database founded on IRS Form

While government of‌f‌i cials

often assess the organizational

practices and characteristics of

the nonprof‌i ts with which they

contract in ef‌f orts to ensure

timely, ef‌f‌i cient, and ef‌f ective

contract performance, probably

few governments pay much

attention to the behaviors of

the boards of directors of those

organizations.

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