The Collaboration Decision in Nonprofit Organizations Views From the Front Line

To understand the impact of collaborative service delivery by nonprofit organizations, scholars must fully understand why those nonprofits enter into service delivery collaborations and what motivates them to collaborate with another organization to deliver their services. Drawing on managers' retrospective accounts concerning the creation of interagency collaborations and applying multiple theoretical perspectives, this article explores what managers directly involved in collaborations perceive to be the rewards or benefits of those collaborations. This research demonstrates the multiple forces driving the formation of interagency collaborations, in particular the desire to secure benefits attached to service delivery and to secure benefits for the organization as a whole. Understanding why nonprofit managers enter into interagency service delivery collaborations will allow for scholars to better determine the full impact of those collaborations on both services and the nonprofit organizations engaged in the collaborations.