Volume 7, Issue 3 -

Quasi-Governmental Organizations (QGOs) are organizations that have both public and private characteristics, not fitting neatly into either category. One type of QGO is an organization incorporated as a private, nonprofit organization, but run by a board of directors that is composed of government officials or directors appointed by a unit of traditional government. These QGOs pose distinct conceptual and policy challenges that differ from those of traditional government entities or purely private nonprofits. Drawing on a convenience sample of five such QGOs incorporated in one metropolitan region (Greater Cleveland, Ohio), this piece explores potential reasons for, and possible pitfalls of, mixing private organizational legal status with public-affiliated leaders by developing a framework and proposing a research agenda for future study.

Today, many regulators’ operations publish information derived from registration and reporting by charitable organizations and commercial fundraising firms. Similar publication is found in a variety of situations – restaurant sanitation notices and hospital re-infection rates, among many others. Recent scholarship has explored the theory of regulatory disclosure, identifying how required disclosures can influence organizational behavior and potentially improve public welfare. An important feature of this theory is the “action cycle,” in which a requirement to disclose information about a process or product shapes consumers’ choices, in turn inducing suppliers to modify their behavior in a desired direction. In this paper, we sketch briefly three widespread approaches that have at different times characterized the regulators’ efforts, describe some of the inherent difficulties that regulators, whether independent or governmental, will encounter in connection with charitable activities, and explore the potential for constraining or eliminating abusive practices by required public disclosure of related information.

When government agencies interact with nonprofit organizations they have various effects on the organization’s capacity. But, it is unclear how a particular agency’s environment-both internal (i. e. organizational culture) and external (i. e. resource dependency)-determines whether government’s influence on that agency will be positive or negative. Using data from a survey of child welfare nonprofits, this paper examines to what extent a nonprofit’s relationship with government improves or hinders their capacity. Evidence suggests that the nonprofit’s organizational culture, dependency on government funds, and relational contracting has a significant impact on the perception that governmental interaction has made capacity better or worse. Contrary to expectations, there are improvements in management activities as government funding and contracts increases.

Place matters in human services. Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) devolves spending to services, most often provided by nonprofit organizations. We argue that this devolution allows for people to “vote with their feet” (Ostrom, Tiebout, and Warren 1961: “The organization of government in metropolitan areas: A theoretical inquiry.” American Political Science Review 55:831–42) in seeking jurisdictions where there will be more spending on human services. This paper considers the spatial patterns of human service expenditures, arguing that people of lower Socio-Economic Status (SES) are less likely to benefit from higher human service spending. We use a spatial Durbin regression to indicate the effects of SES on expenditures in a home county as well as the spillover effect to surrounding counties. The results show that while human service expenditures increase as African American and Renter populations increase in a home county, they also indicate that neighboring counties free-ride on the efforts of the home jurisdiction. Likewise, as a population ages, there is a very large free-riding effect. We conclude that the decentralized TANF policy regime allows for jurisdictions to specialize in human services.

This article examines how the Egyptian government produced a legal, regulatory, and operational environment designed to “divide and throttle” the country’s NGO sector. We identify a two-pronged government strategy toward the NGO sector – namely, flooding the field and bureaucratic overload – the effect of which was to fragment and weaken the sector and prevent it from forming an effective oppositional bloc. We furthermore argue that this government strategy promoted competition rather than cooperation among NGOs. Organizations espoused competing strategic visions for the sector that divided organizations into camps of “charity,” “development,” and “advocacy.” The ultimate consequence of this competition was a sector of NGOs that, instead of valuing pluralism and building upon diverse comparative advantages to create sector-wide strength, belittled each other and failed to coalesce. Egypt’s NGO sector became a tool of the state rather than a force for collective empowerment or a voice for societal change.