| Abstract: | This article discusses implications of the 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) for nonprofit social service organizations. We emphasize their role in the contemporary social safety net in relation to the public sector. Based on a study of ninety organizations operating in the Detroit metropolitan area, we adopted the supplementary, complementary, and adversarial framework from Young (1999) to assess the complex and evolving relationship between the nonprofit and public sectors in the post‐PRWORA era. The findings indicate a clear presence of all three perspectives; however, the continued shifting of responsibility for social services to private, nonprofit organizations suggests a growing dominance of the supplementary role. This raises concerns regarding future nonprofit capacity and other potential costs of nonprofit sector service provision. |
