American government relies heavily on NGOs to deliver government services.
At the federal level and on down, American government has come to rely heavily on nonprofits to deliver public services. This dependence is in many ways understandable, but it comes with serious risks. Feeding our Future, the Minnesota nonprofit whose employees were caught billing for services they didn’t provide, was not the first instance of an NGO stealing from taxpayers, nor will it be the last.
NGOs—private nonprofits that receive government funding—theoretically offer a nimble, targeted way to put policy into effect. Progressives like their grassroots nature; conservatives like that they might offer something closer to private-sector efficiency. Some NGOs perform admirably. Many others don’t, and evidence is scant that this system overall delivers services better than the government. Despite this record, in the past several decades, NGOs have become not so much a policy instrument under democratic control as a sprawling, semiautonomous administrative system with little accountability.
Continue reading the entire piece here at The Atlantic (paywall)
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Stephen Eide is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute.
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