Herrington J. Bryce, Nonprofits as Policy Solutions to the Burden of Government (Walter de DeGruyter, Inc., 2017). 273 pp. $39.99 (paper), ISBN: 9781501514739.

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/puar.12901
• Author: Michelle Wooddell
• Published date: 01 January 2018
• Date: 01 January 2018

164 Public Administration Review • January | February 2018

Herrington J. Bryce , Nonprofits as Policy Solutions to the Burden of

Government ( Walter de DeGruyter, Inc., 2017) . 273 pp. $39.99

(paper), ISBN: 9781501514739 .

I f it sometimes feels as if there is no end to the

scope and services provided by the nonprofit

sector in America, then the latest contribution

from Herrington J. Bryce, life professor of business

administration at the College of William and Mary,

will do much to confirm that these feelings may just

be based in fact. Bryce’s new book, Nonprofits as Policy

Solutions to the Burden of Government , addresses one

of the most relevant and challenging questions facing

both the nonprofit and public sectors: In an era of

tightening government budgets, a seeming lack of

public interest in expanding government bureaucracy,

and ever more challenging problems to address, how

best can policy makers and public administrators create

and utilize nonprofits as a vehicle for service delivery?

Bryce’s stated goal for this book is to explore the idea

that nonprofits can, and should, serve as an important

resource for governmental bodies to deliver services,

and by doing so, taxpayers can largely be relieved of

the burden of paying for those services. In this book,

which is written specifically with policy makers and

public administrators in mind, Bryce largely achieves

his goal of exploring this topic, but his work also raises

key questions for a more thorough debate about the

appropriate role of nonprofits in the public sphere.

The topic of public–private collaboration and the

contracting out of government services to private

entities is a well-tread one, but Bryce’s focus on the

issue is quite narrow. He limits his examination to a

special subset of the nonprofit sector, namely those

nonprofits that are chartered primarily to serve as

either the doers or facilitators of government policy.

That is, these nonprofits are organized specifically and

completely to fulfill some governmental need.

In a systematic way throughout the book, Bryce

describes the conditions necessary for a nonprofit

to be able to successfully absorb and perform the

“burdens” that the government is trying to alleviate—

from the need for adequate financing to the roles and

responsibilities of the nonprofit board. Along the way,

he offers readers a tremendous level of technical detail

about the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) tax code that

underpins the nonprofit sector, explaining at each step

how the nonprofit could, and should, be structured to

best accomplish the government’s mission.

Bryce’s present book continues and extends the

theories he explored in his award-winning 2005

book, Players in the Public Policy Process: Nonprofits

as Social Capital and Agents . Specifically, he views the

nonprofit sector as an acceptable and even preferred

method for meeting many of the key governmental

challenges faced in the 21st century, what Bryce terms

the “big problems.” These issues, which range from

Reviewed by: Michelle Wooddell

Grand Valley State University

Michelle Wooddell is assistant

professor and the coordinator of the

Masters of Philanthropy and Nonprofit

Leadership program at Grand Valley State

University in Grand Rapids, Michigan. She

teaches courses in nonprofit management,

fundraising, and finance. She is also the

chair-elect of the teaching section of the

Association for Research on Nonprofit

Organizations and Voluntary Action.

E-mail: wooddelm@gvsu.edu

Public Administration Review,

Vol. 78, Iss. 1, pp. 164–165. © 2018 by

The American Society for Public Administration.

DOI: 10.1111/puar.12901.