Principal Results

Survey Sample

Click here for details on the sampling methodology.

Frequency of Partnerships

When asked, “Does your local government/nonprofit organization collaborate with or involve nonprofits/government in any form of public service delivery or planning?” the response was:

	Collaborates with the other sector*	No active collaboration

Georgia Cities	48.2%	51.8%

Georgia Counties	76.5%	23.5%

Georgia Nonprofits	52.4%	47.6%

* Note: Survey respondents were asked to report only on partnerships involving their own local government rather than other jurisdictions; thus, some active areas of inter-sectoral cooperation and support such as public education are not fully represented in this survey because they occur through state or regional agencies.

Scope of Partnerships

Local governments and nonprofit organizations collaborate to deliver public services in the following ways.

The most active service areas for collaboration, as reported by public managers, are:

	Cities	Counties	Total

Social/health/human services	23.3%	44.4%	29.9%

Public safety/emergency response	20.4%	31.7%	23.6%

Economic development	32.0%	9.5%	22.4%

Parks and recreation	13.6%	11.1%	12.1%

Arts/culture	5.8%	1.6%	4.0%

Environment and natural resources	4.9%	1.6%	3.4%

Other/missing			4.6%

The largest and most longstanding partnerships are in public safety and emergency response, involving an average of nine nonprofit organizations and 24 average years of joint activity. Partnerships in social/human and health services involved an average of seven nonprofit organizations and lasted an average of eight years. Arts/culture, parks/recreation and economic development partnerships involved two to four nonprofits and lasted 12-19 years on average.

The most frequent joint activities , as reported by public managers, are:

Activity	Frequency

Exchanges of information	41.1%

Govt funds nonprofit through contract or grant	37.0%

Shared workspace	35.6%

Joint service delivery	30.1%

Shared volunteers	30.1%

Shared staff	22.7%

Joint program development	22.1%

Joint fundraising	15.3%

Joint advocacy	14.7%

Joint recruitment of staff or volunteers	11.7%

The above frequencies suggest that government and nonprofit partners rely on one another not only as a source of material or financial resources, but also as a source of information and expertise. However, this study also found that partners engage in relatively few of these joint activities – on average, just two to three collaborative activities.

Partnerships and Formal Contracts

This study was particularly interested in determining the extent to which public managers rely on formal agreements to manage their private sector partnerships. Contracts are thought to represent a common control agent and necessary means of public accountability.

Contracts were not as frequent as expected. When asked about their most active area of collaboration with a nonprofit organization, only 44.5% of cities reported that this partnership involved a formal agreement, while 62.5% of county managers reported the same.

These results suggest that mechanisms other than formal agreements play a role in satisfying concerns about public accountability. This study found, for example, that local governments were more likely to exert their leadership in partnerships that did not rely on a formal agreement. Governments were most likely to make key decisions in partnerships involving public safety and emergency response, parks and recreation, and arts and culture. Partnerships involving shared decisionmaking were most likely in the areas of environmental and natural resources or economic development.

Factors that Foster or Discourage Collaboration

Size of government: In Georgia , the largest jurisdictions and nonprofit institutions are most likely to engage with their public or nonprofit counterparts. Georgia 's 65 counties reporting active nonprofit partnerships had average current general expenditures of $44.8 million (FY2003), compared to the average of $8.9 million in the 20 counties reporting no government-nonprofit partnerships. The difference was $4.8 million versus $1.2 million between Georgia cities with and without active nonprofit partnerships.

Fiscal health: Georgia 's more fiscally stable governments report more collaboration with nonprofits when compared to those in fiscal stress.* Younger nonprofit organizations are also less likely to engage with local governments, as are those without a national affiliation.

*Government fiscal stress is measured by the amount of public expenditures per capita, the ratio of tax revenue to potential tax revenue (“fiscal effort index”) and the rate of growth or decline in the community population over a ten-year period.

Why do larger and healthier communities engage with nonprofits more frequently? The reasons will vary, but may include opportunity, organizational resources and capacity, and prior experience with the other sector.

Opportunity: Urban areas of the state have more nonprofits and more complex public needs.

Capacity: Organizational capacity could also play a role, in that larger organizations have more staff and more time to engage in the time-consuming process of joint planning and program administration. When asked why they did not work with the other sector, both nonprofit and public managers cited limitations on staffing or resources as the primary reason.

Experience: Communities with active nonprofit partnerships were substantially more likely to be staffed by public managers who had nonprofit experience as an employee or board member. Since research from other states has found that government and nonprofit managers display a deep lack of understanding about the other sector, it stands to reason that shared experiences help to bridge this divide, and to build trust and familiarity. These results certainly point to the value in recruiting public managers with nonprofit experience in order to promote intersectoral cooperation more broadly.

The association between experience and collaboration was particularly pronounced at the city level, most of which have much smaller governments than counties and where the nonprofit experience of the chief administrative officer – often one of just a few town officials – could make a tangible difference in the decision to engage with nonprofits.

Goals of Partnership

Public managers:

Consistent with other studies of privatization activity, Georgia public managers were most interested in the cost-benefits of partnership and the ability to improve community services through public-private partnerships. When asked what they hoped to achieve from their partnership with nonprofit organizations, public managers were most likely to discuss the opportunity to improve service quality (70.6%), to build a stronger community (60.0%) and to improve community access to a service (54.1%).

An opportunity to build relationships between the sectors was found to be almost as important. Respondents cited the ability of these partnerships to improve community relations (49.4%), to promote shared goals (45.9%) and to jointly address problems they could not solve alone (45.9%).

City and county managers were less likely to cite other potential benefits more closely related to cost-savings. They reported their intention to gain new resources 28.8% of the time, and to gain professional expertise 22.4% of the time. Nonetheless, these respondents may view “relationship building” as a step toward achieving cost-benefits, such as gaining additional private sector expertise.

Only 21.2% reported that they were statutorily or legally required to engage in a nonprofit partnership.

Nonprofit managers:

According to Georgia nonprofit executive directors, the most commonly cited reasons to engage in a partnership with a local government agency were to meet their mission objectives (65%), to improve service quality (60.9%) and to build a stronger community (60.9%). Nonprofit directors were equally as likely as government managers to cite an interest in using partnerships to build inter-sectoral relationships (45%).

Not surprisingly, money matters to nonprofits: executive directors were substantially more likely than public managers to express an interest in obtaining new financial resources through partnerships with government (52.3% compared to 28.8%). We note, however, that fewer than half of these partnerships (48.1%) resulted in government funding of any kind. Factors other than money (such as similar goals) also likely influence nonprofit interest in working with local governments.

Achievements

Are the goals expressed by public and nonprofit managers achieved through these partnerships?

77.2% of public managers and 66.3% of nonprofit directors reported cost-savings in their partnerships, while 50.4% of nonprofits and 61.7% of local governments reported they secured new funding. In both samples, 90% or more reported improvements in public service delivery or quality.

76.8% of government managers and 37.1% of nonprofit directors reported that their partnership helped them to recruit more volunteers.

Respondents from both sectors also reported improved relationships through partnering. These results held true most strongly for public managers, where 72.3% reported that the partnership created more favorable attitudes by public employees toward working with nonprofits, 77.1% reported that partnering created more favorable attitudes by elected officials toward nonprofits, and 79.4% reported that partnering increased their local government's trust in its nonprofit partner(s). Nonprofits reported lower benefits: 56% reported an improvement in employee attitudes toward government, and 66.4% reported an improvement in board attitudes.

Does partnering reduce competition among partners for resources? Only 22.9% of the nonprofit directors, and 50.7% of the government managers agreed that the partnership reduced the need for partners to compete for resources. And in communities without active government-nonprofit partnerships, many public managers suggested that competition for resources even discourages collaboration.

Updated: 7/1/2005