Chapter 3: Cross-sector Collaboration

Our discussion of social innovation began with the acknowledgment that societies have long recognized the social ills that plagued their communities. This was the case before nonprofit organizations existed to organize responses to these problems, and certainly before governments, nonprofits, and private business ever thought to coordinate their efforts. In the Unites States, we did not recognize formal organizing of the nonprofit sector until the 1900s, which is now defined as “those entities that are organized for public purposes, are self-governed, and do not distribute surplus revenues as profits” (Boris & Steuerle, 2006). According to the National Center for Charitable Statistics, approximately 1.56 million nonprofits were registered with the Internal Revenue Service in 2015. The nonprofit sector comprises an estimated 5.4% of the gross domestic product of the United States. As we know, governments and private businesses were formally organized and recognized long before then. But what led governments and nonprofits to collaborate? There are several schools of thought regarding the inefficiencies of each sector at solving social problems that contribute to their motivation to work together. We will start our discussion of collaboration by highlighting a few of the key theories in this chapter.