Today's Inquirer had a story that ran on page B-1 about the transfer of over $75 million from the City to Philadelphia Safe and Sound, a well known child advocacy group and a member of The Next Mayor Community Network.
Safe and Sound also produces the annual Children's Report Card, which shows us the hard numbers regarding the health and welfare of the city's children and youth, broken down to the neighborhood level. With the increase in funding, Safe and Sound will administer more after-school programs and other youth violence prevention measures so that the Department of Human Services can shed these functions and concentrate more on its "core mission of keeping children safe."
This group is one of hundred of non-profits that receive city funding to do some sort of social service work. This has become pretty much the norm for cities seeking to trim their own payrolls. They contract out the work and then, in theory, hold the contractors accountable for achieving certain goals. Problems occur when those contractors continue to get money even as the statistics fail to provide evidence of improvement or they get money because of some personal connection to those who give out the money. Many of these arrangements are effectively hidden by the impenetrability of the city budget.
It may be unfair to include these concerns in a post that began with Philadelphia Safe and Sound since by most accounts that group does good work and is pretty transparent. But with more and more taxpayer money flowing to non-profits, perhaps the next mayor, while reforming the budget to make it more performance-based, could include ways to make these arrangements more transparent. This way, taxpayers themselves could see how effectively these groups are using their funding and whether it may be time to cut the ineffective ones loose.
Comments (5)
Safe and Sound is by all accounts a good program but you have raised some serious questions about accountability.
This is a trend which rates to continue as private non-profits are in many ways cost effective—-in part because they generally do not have unionized employees. The trend towards contracting out to private non-profits is a trend towards a non-unionized social service work force.
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