Government-funded non-profit organisations can give consumers a choice in public service delivery, to supplement or replace a State service.
There is an overlap of terminology for non-profit organisations involved in public service delivery:
· Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) are defined in the UN Guiding Principles as “Non-State, not-for-profit, voluntary entities formed by people in the social sphere that are separate from the State and the market.” It is a useful umbrella term, which includes charities and NGOs.
· Charities, sometimes run by volunteers, seek private donations for charitable purposes. Governments can provide them with some funding, to supplement the services provided by the State.
· A Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO) is defined by Investopedia as “a group that functions independently of any government with the objective of improving social conditions. NGOs are typically non-profit institutions. They are sometimes called civil society organizations and are established on community, national, and international levels to serve a social or political goal such as a humanitarian cause or the protection of the environment.”
It is possible for government-funded non-profit organisations to offer alternatives for some State-provided services, allowing consumer choice and avoiding the need for bureaucratic central management. In the care sector, for example, it is possible to provide a wide variety of service offerings by using a mix of public funding and private charitable donations. Civil society tends to have employees with a desire to serve the public rather than a profit motive. Churches, for example, can call upon volunteers to provide some services.
An individualist argument against using civil society, as compared to commercial services, could be that the absence of the profit motive might reduce the capital available for innovation and for improving service quality.
(This is an archive of a page intended to form part of Edition 4 of the Patterns of Power series of books. The latest versions are at book contents).