Mediating Accountability: How Nonprofit Funding Intermediaries Use Performance Measurement and Why It Matters for Governance

Abstract

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.