Government, Charities, and Business Will Join Forces, Bush Adviser Predicts

As the 20th century came to a close,

so did the debate over whether governments will increasingly turn to non-profit organizations and for-profit companies to help deliver services to citizens.

So argues Stephen Goldsmith, who just completed eight years as the Mayor of Indianapolis and who serves as an adviser to Texas Gov. George W. Bush, the leading Republican contender in the 2000 Presidential race.

The issue in coming decades will be the rules of engagement, he says: Exactly how charities, businesses, and government will work together while competing in a constructive way. Such a world, he says — in which the lines between governments, charities, and businesses are increasingly blurred — can only be beneficial for the people who need help.

Mr. Goldsmith, a former district attorney, gained national notice during his tenure as Mayor for the way he allowed private businesses to compete for contracts to deliver city services, such as trash pickup and airport management. He also got attention for creating the Front Porch Alliance, a partnership of city government with churches, “faith-based” organizations, and neighborhood groups that many see as a model of government and charity cooperation.

“I never was of the school that philanthropy could take the place of government,” says Mr. Goldsmith. “That’s just impractical: It’s naïve to assume that just making something private will make it good.”

He adds: “Some have the view that faith-based groups on their own could solve the problems of our country, and I think that’s just unrealistic. But it’s also unrealistic to believe that government can do so on its own.”

Out of necessity, governments will step up efforts to get charities and for-profit companies to compete with each other — and with governments themselves — for the right to provide social and other services, says Mr. Goldsmith. “I for one don’t believe that private service providers — charities and companies — are inherently much better than public ones,” says Mr. Goldsmith. “But I do believe that government monopolies on who provides services tend to punish the poor. Competition is healthy.”

Mr. Goldsmith talks with the confidence and cadence of a social scientist: He has lectured at colleges and written essays for influential newspapers and scholarly journals.

He started the Front Porch Alliance in the fall of 1997 as a cooperative effort between the city and churches, synagogues, mosques, and other faith-based and neighborhood organizations to enhance the community-building work of all groups.

The alliance in part acts like a clearinghouse, enabling government and non-profit officials, as well as volunteers, to talk over problems and devise solutions. The alliance’s goal: Fight crime, drug use, teen-age pregnancy, and other scourges block by block. Sometimes the city provides money to its alliance partners. Other times the city helps a religious institution or neighborhood group obtain federal or foundation money — or even volunteer workers — for a project.

One reason the Front Porch Alliance has been praised, says Mr. Goldsmith, is that its members can do what large government programs sometimes cannot. “As life becomes more complex and the problems of those that are left behind become more complex, then almost by definition the bureaucratic model of government — well-intentioned and highly professional that it is — cannot solve the multiple needs of the urban poor,” he says.

The alliance’s success, he says, also stems from the particular nature of faith-based organizations. “There is increasing recognition that the problems are value issues, character issues, not just how-much-money-do-you-have issues. Government doesn’t transmit values, so there will be momentum for faith-based localized groups to assist.”

Although Mr. Goldsmith predicts that his city’s experiment will be copied by many other communities in coming years, he recognizes that some forces are working against the idea. One is the federal government itself: “Congress tends to believe you can solve problems by passing a law or announcing a program,” he says. Also, he adds, government bureaucrats themselves at all levels “are resilient and tend to operate, though not explicitly, for their own interests, and will fight strenuously to protect themselves from losing too much authority in neighborhood-based organizations.”

Mr. Goldsmith also has cautionary words for those who would try to copy the model of the Front Porch Alliance.

“A major problem will be to avoid trying to ‘scale up,’” he says. “If you have lots of small successes, you can, if you want to change the world, do two things: One is to simply have thousands of more small successes. The other is to scale up the successes you have, a really dangerous tendency because many of the things that make these operations work is the passion of the individuals involved and the local responses.”

In fact, Mr. Goldsmith says he has told out-of-state government officials who visited him to try a variety of approaches. One piece of advice: “Inject competition into the process of deciding who should run programs, so that people who need help can turn as often as possible to the government, a charity, or a for-profit business.”

He says he learned firsthand how difficult it can be to revamp the way a city delivers services. Six years ago, Mr. Goldsmith and the city turned to companies to help people on welfare obtain jobs. “Many people in the non-profit community were unhappy with this move,” he says. “This was my first clue that every member of every non-profit board was a friend of mine from somewhere. They all called, and they all complained.”

But Mr. Goldsmith says the city marched on, and today has about a dozen contracts with non-profit and for-profit organizations to deliver a variety of programs.

Faith-based groups potentially have a big part to play in the next century, says Mr. Goldsmith, noting that Governor Bush has promoted new government relationships with such organizations in Texas and delivered his first major campaign speech on the topic in Indianapolis. Vice-President Al Gore, a Democrat, also supports a broader role for religious organizations.

“The fact that two leading candidates for the major parties find this important is a recognition that we will experience a sea change in terms of social-service delivery,” says Mr. Goldsmith.

He adds: “To the extent that we take advantage of these important groups, it will be a huge trend for the future. To the extent that it becomes rhetoric, then we’ll have more problems.”