Contracting with Voluntary Service Agencies in the USA

In the United States, government contracting with voluntary agencies emerged in the 1960s as a central government strategy to address urgent social problems.¹ Indeed, government’s primary response to a wide variety of social problems including emergency relief, AIDS, community living for the devel-opmentally disabled and chronic mentally ill, job training for the disadvan-taged, and foster care, has relied heavily upon government contracting. This reliance on contracting has in turn profoundly affected social policy, the governance and management of voluntary agencies receiving contracts, the staff and volunteers in these agencies, and the clients receiving services (Smith, 2010a; Smith and Lipsky, 1993).