ABSTRACT
Interest in the accountability of nonprofi t organisations (NPOs) has increased considerably in recent decades, particularly since 1990, driven by increased delivery by these organisations of services on behalf of government (Catlaw & Chapman, 2007; Dunleavy & Hood, 1994; Kettl, 2000; Spicer, 2004), together with public concern about scandals involving NPOs (Ebrahim, 2003a). The mutual reliance of NPOs on government funding, and governments on NPOs for service delivery (Ebrahim, 2005) means that NPOs are not just providers of public goods and services, but have ‘become the providers of public funded, public goods’ and services (Candler & Dumont, 2010, p. 260). The sorts of services provided by NPOs in Australia typically include education, health, social services, housing, disability, rehabilitation and counselling (Lyons, 1998). This widespread practice of contracting out government services carries specifi c risks, as accountability can decrease (Mulgan, 1997), or at least become problematic (Mulgan, 2000a, 2000b). In fact, the accountability of NPO to government under service delivery contracts is considered by many to be not just problematic, but even adversarial (Menefee, 1997; Young, 2000), with good examples quite rare (Brown & Troutt, 2004).
