When a government agency and a nonprofit organization enter into a contract to provide a public service, each party must perform a delicate balancing act. The nonprofit organization must weigh the benefits of engagement with the public sector against the perils of entanglement. The government agency must afford the nonprofit organization enough autonomy to benefit from its flexibility and creativity, all the while holding the private organization accountable for furthering public purposes. This article develops a typology of technical, organizational, and contextual factors that may affect each party's ability to strike its balance and then uses this typology to analyze the experiences of governments and quasi-nonprofit charter schools in three states: Colorado, Massachusetts, and Michigan.
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