Connecting the composition of collaborative governance structure to community-level performance in homeless services

Abstract

Collaborative governance has become prevalent in public service provision as both government and nonprofit sectors face pressure to solve multidimensional social problems in communities while improving performance. Drawing on collaborative governance and homeless services literature, this article explores how providing services in a collaborative governance network through government and nonprofit service providers differentially relates to multiple dimensions of performance—effectiveness, internal efficiency, social efficiency, and service heterogeneity—at the community level. By using a two-way fixed effects estimator and a unique nonprofit and homeless services dataset, the findings indicate that collaborative governance between government and nonprofit service providers relates to increased effectiveness (e.g., less homelessness), and mixed results for service heterogeneity relative to using one sector. The composition of collaborative governance networks matters for performance, but its precise relationship with community-level performance depends on the specific aspect of performance.