Nonprofit organizations in urban politics and policy.

Nonprofit organizations are central to the current debate on the future of American urban policy and politics. Nonprofits are regarded by a broad range of citizens and policymakers as critical to fostering citizen participation, grass-roots democracy, more responsive, effective urban governance and services, and a more satisfied citizenry. Nonprofits are also viewed as an opportunity to bring people together and build community and social capital, to use Robert Putnam' (1993a) popular term for trust and cooperation among citizens. By "building community", nonprofits will achieve the twin goals of involving a broad cross-section of an urban community in the governance of their own affairs. In the process, it is hoped that communities will more successfully address pressing urban problems.

Many people also endorse nonprofits because they are envisioned as an alternative to government. In this view, nonprofits can limit the growth of the state, provide flexible services without the constraints of government regulations and oversight, and devise solutions to public problems that do not require government intervention (Glazer, 1989; Berger and Neuhaus, 1977; Meyer, 1982; Schambra, 1997). Government contracting with nonprofit organizations may also help improve the efficiency of urban services by spurring competition among nonprofit (and for-profit) organizations for public funds (Savas, 1982).

The broad, bipartisan appeal of nonprofit organizations to help solve urban problems and improve the governance of urban institutions is apparent in many contemporary urban policy and program initiatives. Notable examples include: the Atlanta Project designed to revitalize distressed parts of the city to community development corporations (CDCs) to foster economic development and build low-income housing; the federally sponsored Enterprise Zones which rely heavily upon nonprofit organizations at the local level; the support for greater reliance on faith-based organizations to provide public services; the growth of community partnerships and coalitions to solve a variety of problems facing urban America; and the restructuring of decision making in urban communities to incorporate a greater role for neighborhood associations and groups in the planning and oversight of municipal services.

As is often the case though, the implementation of these diverse initiatives has outpaced our knowledge of the consequences for public policy and the citizenry. As a result, the excellent papers in this volume are timely and important. Collectively, the papers cover a very broad range of programs and policies in urban communities in the United States. The papers identify and discuss key issues facing policymakers and the public as these nonprofit programs increase in prominence and popularity. Especially welcome is the focus of the papers on the impact of these new, more varied roles for nonprofit organizations on democracy and citizen participation.

The diversity of the nonprofit sector and its increasing prominence in urban policy is strikingly evident in the papers. Richard Hula and Cynthia Jackson-Elmoore focus on "governing nonprofits" drawing upon their empirical research on two prominent governing nonprofits in Detroit: New Detroit and Detroit Renaissance. Barbara Ferman and Patrick Kaylor concentrate on the many neighborhood associations and voluntary groups in the Mount Airy neighborhood of Philadelphia. Marion Orr presents very important research on another "governing nonprofit": Baltimoreans United in Leadership Development (BUILD), an organization involved in many critical policy issues such as school reform in Baltimore in the last 25 years.

The papers of the other contributors, Susan Clarke, Jeffrey Henig, Joseph Cordes, and Eric Charles Twombly, and Julia Koschinsky and Todd Swanstrom tend to concentrate on nonprofit agencies providing an actual service to the community. Clarke's paper exemplifies the interconnections between nonprofit agencies as service providers for the welfare state and their roles in governance, citizen participation, and building social capital and community. Henig, Cordes and Twombly address the implications of privatization on nonprofit human service providers. And, Koschinsky and Swanstrom analyze the complicated political and organizational issues raised by the dramatic expansion of nonprofit, low-income housing organizations during the 1980s and 1990s, fueled in part by federal policy including the Low Income Housing Tax Credit.

Despite the different approaches and themes in the six papers, all of the papers address the increasingly complex relationships between government and civil society---the term often used today to refer to the non-governmental, non-market aspects of society (Cohen, 1999; Smith, 1999; O'Connell, 1999). Consequently, the papers provide insight into the changing landscape of urban policy and politics as well as new directions for the American welfare state. In the following pages, I discuss the six papers in more detail and place them in the context of broader examination of nonprofits in urban communities and the American welfare state.