Exploring the Role of Nonprofits in Public Service Provision: Moving from Coproduction to Cogovernance

• Author: Yuan (Daniel) Cheng
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/puar.12970
• Published date: 01 March 2019
• Date: 01 March 2019

Exploring the Role of Nonprofits in Public Service Provision: Moving from Coproduction to Cogovernance 203

Yuan (Daniel) Cheng

University of Minnesota

Exploring the Role of Nonprofits in Public Service Provision:

Moving from Coproduction to Cogovernance

Abstract: This article investigates the determinants of nonprofits’ involvement in cogovernance, or the planning and

design of public services, using a unique data set of park-supporting nonprofit organizations in large U.S. cities. The

results indicate that nonprofits are more likely to get involved in cogovernance when they are younger, larger, and

operate in communities that are more resourceful and stable. In addition, the likelihood of nonprofits’ involvement in

cogovernance is negatively associated with the level of social capital and government capacity to provide corresponding

public services. The article points to an emerging mode of government-nonprofit collaboration that goes beyond the

production and delivery of public services. As public managers face extensive challenges in sustaining the desired level

of public services, these findings have important policy implications for efforts to promote citizen participation and

cross-sector solutions to complex social problems.

Evidence for Practice

• Cogovernance is a distinct type of nonprofit support for public services. Involving citizens and nonprofits in

the design and planning of public services requires a different set of organizational and community capacities

compared with involving nonprofits in the delivery of public services.

• As local governments face or suffer from increasing fiscal pressure, nonprofits’ involvement in cogovernance

may become more prevalent. Both local governments and nonprofits need to be strategic and proactive about it.

• Cogovernance is not a panacea. It raises important management and governance questions for the design and

reform of public service systems.

New Public Management began to take shape

in the 1980s and 1990s, exemplified by

administrative reforms in New Zealand and

later Western Europe and the United States. Public

management borrowed management practices from

the private sector, and contracting became widespread

among American governments at different levels

(Kettl 2002; Salamon 2002). Government agencies

are increasingly using indirect management tools and

network arrangements to deliver public services (Kettl

2002; O’Toole 1997). Nonprofit organizations, or

the third sector in general, have received increasing

attention from public management scholars because of

their prominent role in the provision and production

of public services (Brandsen and Pestoff 2006; Smith

and Lipsky 1993).

Despite this surge of scholarly interest in government-

nonprofit collaboration for public service provision

(Gazley and Guo 2015), the public administration

literature has focused on the instrumental orientations

of nonprofits’ involvement in the delivery of public

services. The key question is how nonprofits can serve

as a tool of government to more efficiently produce

and deliver public services. The role of nonprofits

in creating, planning, and designing public services

remains a blind spot in the public administration

scholarship, despite the fact that nonprofits have

served in these important roles since colonial times

(Hall 1992), from the creation of Harvard College

in 1636, to the public library movement boosted by

Andrew Carnegie, to the Gates Foundation’s efforts

to improve K–12 education in recent years. This

limitation is amplified when governments at all levels

are experiencing fiscal stress and are increasingly

relying on nonprofit organizations for financing

public services (Gazley, Cheng, and LaFontant 2015;

Nelson and Gazley 2014). Therefore, a complete

understanding of the role of nonprofits in multiple

phases of public service provision is desperately

needed (Brandsen and Pestoff 2006; Fyall 2016;

Mosley 2012).

Literature in governance offers a promising alternative

for understanding the role of nonprofits in public

service provision. Governance is concerned with how

different sectors interact with each other and engage

in joint decision making (Klijn 2012). It emphasizes

Research Article

Yuan (Daniel) Cheng is assistant

professor in the Hubert H. Humphrey

School of Public Affairs at the University of

Minnesota, where he teaches public and

nonprofit management. His research focuses

on a range of theoretical and managerial

questions at the nexus of governance,

government-nonprofit relationships,

coproduction, and the distributional and

performance implications of cross-sectoral

collaboration, often with a substantive focus

on urban sustainability.

E-mail: chengyuan87@gmail.com

Public Administration Review,

Vol. 79, Iss. 2, pp. 203–214. © 2018 by

The American Society for Public Administration.

DOI: 10.1111/puar.12970.