The discussion of coproduction in the third sector has surged in the last few decades. Since the early 1980’s – not coincidentally, also an era of government fiscal retrenchment – coproduction has been regarded as a central mechanism of improving public service quality through citizen participation and involvement (Parks et al. 1981; Brudney & England 1983).
Coproduction of public services is generally viewed as a beneficial means of engaging citizen energy and voice, and improving service quality. However, theories of government failure and philanthropic particularism suggest that handing over too much responsibility for public service provision to the private sector can result in inequitable service delivery. This paper tests this proposition using a unique, national dataset of charities created to support state and federal parks across the United States. Known as “Friends of the Parks”, these charities serve nearly 100% of U.S. national parks and 40% of state parks.
The analyzed data combine several rich and valuable sources: substantial coded characteristics of the charity via the National Center for Charitable Statistics Core PC files (revenues, expenditures, activities, verified and augmented by hand), joined with similarly rich community demographics via the U.S. Census Bureau (income, race, education, volunteerism, etc.), combined with park visitorship and other outcome data, including comprehensive state and federal park system finance and activity data via the National Parks Foundation and the National Association of State Park Directors.
The resulting data offers the ability to understand this charitable activity as a function of community philanthropic and voluntary capacity. The working hypotheses are, first, that coproduction of public services via a citizen-led charity is a less stable (efficient) financial strategy, and second, that there will be a positive association between community wealth and charitable capacity to support a park (addressing service effectiveness). If found, the social equity problems that would accompany such results are self-evident. This research is built at the intersection of the public and private sectors and should be of interest to both scholars studying charitable activity as well as those studying governments under fiscal stress. The discussion will also suggest ways in which literature on coproduction and nonprofit finance could be better linked to understand the sustainability of co-productive activities.
This research will also contribute to theory building in the areas of nonprofit-government collaboration, public-private partnerships, and privatization – particularly because much of the scholarship in these fields assumes a single direction of funding flows from government to nonprofit organizations. The increase in permanent, organized government-supporting charitable institutions challenges traditional notions that this funding is incidental and unimportant to government revenue planning, and suggests that public managers need to understand, manage, and adapt to this new level of engagement of nonprofit organizations and private actors.
Value co-creation, co-design and co-production in public services
