In recent years, government’s primary response to the emergent problems of homelessness, hunger, child abuse, health care, and AIDS has been generated through nonprofit agencies funded by taxpayer money. As part of the widespread movement for privatization, these agencies represent revolutionary changes in the welfare state. Steven Smith and Michael Lipsky demonstrate that this massive shift in funds has benefits and drawbacks. Given the breadth of government funding of nonprofit agencies, this first study of the social, political, and organizational effects of this service strategy is an essential contribution to the current raging debates on the future of the welfare state.

• Contents 
• Part I: 
• The Turn to Nonprofits
• 1. 
• Contracting for Services in the Welfare State
• The Scope of Nonprofit Service Organizations
• Issues for the Welfare State
• 2. 
• Nonprofit Organizations and Community
• Nonprofits as Manifestations of Community
• Community and the Theory of Nonprofit Organizations
• Toward a Political Explanation of Nonprofit Organizations
• Three Types of Nonprofit Service Agencies
• Part II: 
• The Contracting Regime
• Introduction to Part II
• 3. 
• The Political Economy of Nonprofit Revenues
• Historical Background
• Impact at the Service Delivery Level
• The Reagan Era and a Changing Federal Role
• 4. 
• Guardians of Community and Issues of Governance
• Boards of Directors
• Executive Directors
• Boards, Executives, and Community
• 5. 
• Service Providers for the Welfare State
• Professionalization
• Deprofessionalization and Government Funding
• Volunteers and Organizational Capacity
• The New Street-Level Bureaucrats
• 6. 
• Services and Clients under Contracting
• Imperatives of Public and Nonprofit Service Organizations
• Significance of Differences between Government and Nonprofits
• Changes in Practices under Contracting
• 7. 
• Dilemmas of Management in Nonprofit Organizations
• Understanding the Nonprofit Organization
• Cash Flow
• The Dance of Contract Renewal
• The Question of Goal Succession
• Part III: 
• Implications for the Welfare State
• 8. 
• The New Politics of the Contracting Regime
• Individual Agencies in the Political Process
• The Rise of Associations of Nonprofit Providers
• The Corporatist Politics of the Contracting Regime
• The Nonprofit Sector under Attack
• 9. 
• Privatization in Human Services: A Critique
• Why Does Government Contract with Nonprofit Agencies ?
• Performance Assessment
• The Irony of Privatization through Contracting
• 10. 
• Government, Nonprofit Agencies, and the Welfare State
• Issues of Citizenship
• Contracting as Symbolic Politics
• Toward a Balanced Approach to Communal Provision
• Tables
• Notes
• Index