An evaluation of the effectiveness of government–non-profit organisations partnership in the delivery of social services

ABSTRACT

This paper evaluates the effectiveness of the partnership between the government and the non-profit organisations (NPOs) that they fund to deliver social services. The paper evaluates the effectiveness of government–NPOs partnership through the prism of the existing monitoring process. The findings suggest that the monitoring process tends to focus more on the institutional processes that govern the operations of NPOs and less on generating information on the performance and impact of NPOs in the long term. The emphasis on institutional processes undermines our understanding of the effectiveness of the partnership and calls for a systematic process that focuses on outcome-oriented monitoring mechanisms.

KEYWORDS:

• Effectiveness
• government-NPOs partnership
• South Africa
• social services

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 Information was obtained from the DSD Registration and Information Management Directorate.

2 The DSD minister's budget vote 2021/22 speech to parliament. Available at: https://www.gov.za/speeches/minister-lindiwe-zulu-social-development-dept-budget-vote-202122-25-may-2021. Information on the number of NPOs funded was not available at the time of writing the paper.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Sokeibelemaye Nwauche

Sokeibelemaye Nwauche recently graduated with a PhD from Nelson Mandela University, South Africa. Her research interests include non-profit social enterprises/social entrepreneurship, public policy, community and socio-economic development.