Lilly Family School of Philanthropy

Permanent URI for this community

https://hdl.handle.net/1805/5185

Browse

Browsing Lilly Family School of Philanthropy by Subject "Accountability"

Now showing 1 - 4 of 4
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Mediating Accountability: How Nonprofit Funding Intermediaries Use Performance Measurement and Why It Matters for Governance
    (Taylor & Francis, 2010) Benjamin, Lehn M.
    Performance measurement has become an important tool for ensuring accountability in a governance environment, where addressing public problems often takes place outside the direct purview of government. Although a good deal of attention has been given to government’s use of performance measurement in these settings, either in contracting relationships or interorganizational networks, this paper argues that ensuring accountability in a governance environment requires greater attention to how nonstate actors, or the other principals, use performance measurement. This paper focuses on nonprofit funding intermediaries and their use of performance measurement. Nonprofit funding intermediaries gather funds from a range of public and private donors and regrant these monies to a defined set of local nonprofits. As such, they occupy somewhat unique positions in a web of actors all seeking to solve public problems. We offer a conceptual overview of intermediaries and then critically examine how three nonprofit funding intermediaries used performance measurement.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Nonprofit Organizations and Outcome Measurement: From Tracking Program Activities to Focusing on Frontline Work
    (Sage, 2012) Benjamin, Lehn M.
    Why do we continue to see evidence that nonprofit staff feel like outcome measurement is missing important aspects of their work? Based on an analysis of over 1,000 pages of material in 10 outcome measurement guides and a focused literature review of frontline work in three types of nonprofit organizations, this article shows that existing outcome measurement frameworks focus on how staff implement programs rather than how staff work with clients. Outcome measurement guides direct nonprofits to track program activities completed and the outcomes resulting from those program activities. In contrast, the accounts of frontline work in nonprofits show that nonprofit staff start by building a relationship with the person they are serving and then adjusting programs and services to better meet the needs and goals of this individual. Consequently, outcome measurement may go some distance in helping us understand nonprofit performance but may also mischaracterize nonprofit performance.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Tax Expenditures and Accountability: The Case of the Ambivalent Principals
    (Oxford University Press, 2018) Benjamin, Lehn M.; Posner, Paul L.
    Tax expenditures have become a widely used tool of government in the United States, with the fiscal impact now rivaling appropriations for discretionary spending. But tax expenditures raise important accountability dilemmas and tradeoffs for the nation. We show that, despite repeated recommendations by oversight agencies to address the significant shortfalls in performance associated with this tool, policymakers and public managers alike remain ambivalent about instituting stronger accountability provisions. Our analysis lends support to a more complicated image of principals emerging in the public management literature, one where principals do not always take action to hold their agents to account. The case of tax expenditures calls for greater attention in public management theory and research to the diverse roles that principals play in program implementation and accountability.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    The Potential of Outcome Measurement for Strengthening Nonprofits’ Accountability to Beneficiaries
    (Sage, 2013) Benjamin, Lehn M.
    This article considers one mechanism that could create a clearer accountability path between nonprofits and their beneficiaries: Outcome measurement. Outcome measurement focuses attention on a nonprofit’s beneficiaries and whether they are better off as a result of the nonprofit’s work. The article analyzed 10 outcome measurement guides targeted to nonprofits, totaling more than 1,000 pages of text. The analysis shows that the guides were neither uniform in the conceptualization of nonprofit beneficiaries nor in how they directed nonprofits to use outcome measurement with their beneficiaries. Despite scholars’ suggestion that a nonprofit’s relationship to their beneficiaries is a key accountability relationship, the guides suggest that beneficiaries have an ambiguous standing, relative to other stakeholders, in the nonprofit accountability environment.