Table 2 - uploaded by Margaret Henderson
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What Accountability Tools Can and Cannot Accomplish What This Tool Can Do What This Tool Cannot Do Alone Contracts Explicitly state mutual expectations Ensure that mutual expectations are met Provide some protection for both nonprofit Generate problem-solving or proactive planning and government in case of nonfulfillment
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In this article we study some conics defined, up to dilatation, by an affinity of the plane. We discuss the mutual relations between the conic and the defining affinity and, in particular, we show how to reproduce affinities related to a given conic. As an application of the theory, we show that the orbital conics of equiaffinities are dilatations...
Veliki tranzit migranata iz Azije i Afrike u evropske zemlje otvorio je brojne javne rasprave, ali i potrebe za istraživanjima koja će biti oslonac za kreiranje kvalitetnih migracionih politika. Empirijska studija "Migranti i mi - socio-psihološka analiza uzajamne percepcije" detaljnije razmatra interakciju između domicilnog stanovništva i migranat...
For such a domain in the unit disk that its images under the action of a Fuchsian group are mutually disjoint, we investigate the possibility how its boundary extends towards the unit circle.
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... For example, communication about the agency-foundation relationship with the public should enhance transparency/accountability, build awareness of the need for and roles of both agency and foundation, and advocate for park and recreation-related issues in the community (Altman-Sauer et al., 2001;Henderson et al., 2003). This communication plan should be developed in alignment with a general strategic plan, to help coordinate day-to-day activities with long-term goals and objectives; the development of a strategic plan is a distinct (and equally important) recommendation if one does not already exist. ...
Inadequate funding is a common and longstanding concern for local public park and recreation agencies. Traditionally, these services are funded predominantly through tax-based allocations, supplemented by other streams such as earned revenue, dedicated levies, and sponsorship agreements. Cost-cutting measures such as outsourcing, overall staffing reductions, and an increasing reliance on a parttime workforce have also become increasingly common in the context of local park and recreation service delivery. Partnership with nonprofit organizations represents another potential strategy to adequately fund local park and recreation services.Partnerships between local park and recreation agencies and nonprofit park and recreation foundations have a long history, and help support local park and recreation agencies in a variety of capacities. Their importance may also be growing as a function of the decline in tax-based support and earned revenue due to both the Great Recession and the global COVID-19 pandemic. Such partnerships are not unique to local parks and recreation however, and are common—and widely studied—at the national and transnational level. Despite their importance to local park and recreation service delivery, and the established body of knowledge examining these partnerships at the national and transnational level, the local agency-foundation relationship remains understudied. In this manuscript we begin to address this gap by providing a clearer picture of the agency-foundation relationship, and identifying strategies for how local park and recreation agencies can most effectively leverage these partnerships. To do so, we employ a qualitative research method, interviewing leaders from both local public park and recreation agencies and nonprofit park foundations. Results illustrate a variety of motivations for initiating an agency-foundation relationship (funding/capacity, deteriorating conditions, and equity), as well as a number of distinct benefits of such a partnership (increased operational capacity, advocacy and outreach, expertise, and non-governmental status). Respondents also identified various characteristics of a successful agency-foundation relationship (effective communication, clear roles and responsibilities, strong connections, and flexibility/responsiveness), and challenges to success (competition for scarce resources, and equity). Based on these results, we propose several strategies to help local park and recreation agencies maximize these partnerships (communicate frequently and with purpose, build relationships, formalize ties, and strive for equitable outcomes).
... As alternatives to neoliberal, high-stakes forms of accountability, scholars (e.g., Oakes & Rogers, 2006;Ranson, 2003;Ryan, 2005) have "advocat[ed] for…bottom-up accountability structure[s] where those who are most impacted by educational outcomes hold those in power accountable for producing and maintaining equitable access" (Morrell, 2017, p.460). One such "bottom-up" or democratic form of accountability gaining increased traction in the literature on education and social sciences more broadly is mutual accountability (Brown, 2007;Henderson, Whitaker, & Altman-Sauer, 2003;Merrifield, 1999). ...
... Where social interactions manifest mutual accountability, participating individuals engage in regular dialogue that aims at negotiating commonly shared "goals, identifications, and interests" (Brown, 2007, p.95). These dialogues of mutual accountability tend to occur within a cycle of three spiraling stages of interactions: responsiveness, responsibility, and report-and-review (Henderson et al., 2003). At the stage of responsiveness, stakeholders offer their diverse perspectives and develop intersubjectivity (i.e., common understandings) (Merrifield, 1999), identify and deliberate around shared problems, and eventually generate potential solutions (Brown, 2007). ...
... In responsibility, participants settle on a common plan of action, divide the labor of this plan, and create shared expectations around its goals or outcomes (Merrifield, 1999). Arriving at reportand-review, stakeholders then discuss and evaluate those actions and outcomes (as well as the relationships and resources inherent to them), and identify new challenges that may have resulted, thus marking a re-engagement in the cycle (Brown, 2007;Henderson et al., 2003). ...
In this study, I explore cogenerative dialogues as potentially supportive spaces for the development of mutual accountability and reciprocal learning between teachers and students, even within contexts dominated by high-stakes accountability and its associated challenges. In cogenerative dialogues, teachers gather with small groups of their students outside of instructional time to discuss classroom teaching and environment and to construct plans by which to improve student learning and wellbeing. Through a design-based case study, I worked with two science teachers, Lorena and Ellen, from urban high schools to establish and enact weekly cogenerative dialogues with their students over a period of five months. The high schools which framed the backdrop of this study served almost exclusively low-income Latino communities and had recently adopted strict measures of high-stakes teacher accountability. Findings indicated that, within the contexts of cogenerative dialogues, Ellen and Lorean engaged with their respective students in cycles of reflection that promoted mutual accountability—an instantiation of which stands in stark contrast to the high-stakes accountability impacting so many teachers and schools today. I found that this cycle of mutual accountability was marked by three particular stages: Responsibility, or the solicitation of various stakeholder perceptions of problematic areas of classroom teaching and environment; Responsiveness, or the co-construction among teacher and students of potential solutions to such problems; and Report-and-Review, or moments where members of the dialogues reflected on, and held one another to account for, their endeavors within the enacted solution. At the same time, however, pressures associated with high-stakes accountability systems operating throughout the two high schools constrained the extent to which these stages of mutual accountability could fully emerge within the cogenerative dialogues. Thus, I argue that cogenerative dialogues can serve as important albeit limited spaces where teachers and students can, to a degree, re-appropriate ‘accountability’ as a mutually supportive element of relationship and learning, even when surrounding environments promote neoliberal, high-stakes interpretations of this concept.
... 5. We acknowledge that resource providers' funding decisions do not only rely on an analysis of financial statements and audit reports, but are based on a myriad of factors. Taking all types of resource providers together (e.g. government agencies, corporations and individual funders) these factors include among others conformity to rules (Jos and Tompkins, 2004), conformity to the conditions and the terms of the grant or the contract (Henderson, Whitaker, & Altman-Sauer, 2003), concern for the NPO's mission and program, appropriate discharge of performance accountability by the NPO, personal relationships, reputation and trust (Carman, 2007). ...
From 2006 onwards very large Belgian nonprofit organizations (NPOs) are legally required to appoint an external auditor. In this context we investigate whether auditor choice in favor of a sector expert, being a higher quality auditor, is associated with NPOs’ expectations regarding several auditor attributes. We find that NPOs are more likely to choose a sector expert if they attach higher importance to an auditor’s client focus and relationship with management. NPOs are less likely to choose a sector expert if they care more about the practical execution of the audit. We provide recommendations for increasing the appeal of sector expertise as valuable auditor attribute. The resulting quality increase of NPOs’ financial statements and audit reports could benefit various stakeholders.
... Similar findings have been documented by Whitaker, Altman-Sauer, and Henderson (2004). According to Henderson et al. (2003, p. 19) " traditional accountability practices often reflect and support an adversarial rather than a cooperative relationship, diverting attention from the public services that are the reason for the partnership " . Brown and MacDonald (2006) found that governmentnonprofit conversations are subjected to the same tendency as board-staff conversations within nonprofits; the tendency to focus on operational issues which are more concrete and less demanding than conversations about mission, goals, outcomes, and performance. ...
Devolution and the New Public Management has increased the privatization of government service and enhanced the role for the nonprofit sector in the United States. Performance contracts are viewed as a method for holding service providers accountable for outcomes. This paper outlines the findings of a two year study which took place at the University of Delaware between September 2005 and April 2007, entitled The Forward Together Project. Ad hoc implementation of performance contracts are found in the state; some as a result of federal mandates, others as championed by leadership. Ingredients desirable for successful performance contracts are explored in this paper. Although the research cannot conclusively attribute performance contract to more effective and efficient service delivery, it does provide evidence of expanded use of performance contracts and the potential for improved accountability and service delivery relationship between state government and nonprofits. In part as a result of the New Public Management, government organizations are devolving their responsibilities for services. This includes from the national government to states to local governments, as well as from government to non-profit and for profit organizations. The phenomenon of increasingly privatized government services and its implication for an enhanced role for the nonprofit sector in the United States is well-documented throughout much of the public administration literature. Performance contracts are viewed as a method for holding service providers accountable for outcomes. Yet, despite their increasing popularity, many questions about this emerging trend have remained largely unanswered. A team of researchers(1) from the University of Delaware has been involved in studying various aspects of the relationship in the contractual arrangement between state government, human service agencies and non-profit organizations. This paper will focus on the performance contract arrangements with the research questions: What is the impetus in government and the nonprofit sector in Delaware to implement performance contracts? What agencies are involved in the performance contracts? And finally, is it leadership, mandated requirements or both that promote the performance contract arrangement? The methodology includes quantitative and qualitative data from on-line surveys conducted with nonprofit and government agencies, in person interviews with performance contract administrators and nonprofit recipients, focus group, and a workgroup that has been meeting to address issues around performance measurement and evaluation. The theoretical framework will be established through the literature on the subjects of performance contracting and leadership. The research methods consisted of a series of 44 in-person interviews, administration of two separate online surveys for a total of 111online responses, document analysis, and focus groups. These are discussed in greater detail in the case study.
... To whom is the organization accountable -the donors, grantors, volunteers and employees, beneficiaries, or the public at large? As stewards of these funds, it is the nonprofit organization's responsibility to ensure that the funds are spent for their intended purposes (Henderson, 2003). It is the nonprofit organization's responsibility to ensure that all stakeholders of those funds -donors, grantors, and the public -are aware of the organization's missions and the priority of those missions. ...
Devolution and the New Public Management has increased the privatization of government service and enhanced the role for the nonprofit sector in the United States. Performance contracts are viewed as a method for holding service providers accountable for outcomes. This paper outlines the findings of a two year study which took place at the University of Delaware between September 2005 and April 2007, entitled The Forward Together Project. Ad hoc implementation of performance contracts are found in the state; some as a result of federal mandates, others as championed by leadership. Ingredients desirable for successful performance contracts are explored in this paper. Although the research cannot conclusively attribute performance contract to more effective and efficient service delivery, it does provide evidence of expanded use of performance contracts and the potential for improved accountability and service delivery relationship between state government and nonprofits.
Research has demonstrated that nonprofit organizations are committed to the performance accountability of service delivery. However, nonprofits often lack the organizational capacity to track service performance as compared to local government. This article presents a case study on how local government can assist nonprofit organizations with building performance capacity for results-based management in the context of mutual accountability. The premise is that local government officials are accountable for why public dollars are granted to nonprofits and for whether those funds are used to accomplish their intended purpose. This research demonstrates that local government can expand the performance capacity in nonprofit organizations with an investment of resources in training and technical assistance and that nonprofits are receptive to results-based management. It also finds that leadership and collaboration are fundamental to mutual accountability.
