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The central principle of coproduction is that individuals or community groups participate jointly with a public agency in the production of park and recreation services from which they or their families are the direct beneficiaries. Typically, a nonprofit community group and an agency sign a formal agreement to pool their complementary resources to deliver the desired service.
Most frequently, the arrangement takes the form of an agency providing a facility, equipment or a financial subsidy, while the group’s resources are mobilized to produce the programmatic element. Typical coproducing organizations include athletic clubs (e.g., Little League, soccer, softball), performing and cultural arts groups, senior citizen clubs, and neighborhood associations.
The negative impact of the pandemic on sales and property taxes, which constitute the major revenue sources for most local governments, inevitably means many park and recreation agencies are facing major reductions in their budgets that are likely to extend throughout the next few years.
The Benefits of Coproduction
Coproduction offers a vehicle for minimizing the impact of budget cuts on service delivery by developing strategies for transitioning the programming element of these services to the groups that benefit from them. In my own city, Little League, a number of adult and youth soccer clubs, swim teams, and youth sport traveling teams organize their programs, while the city provides and schedules facilities for them. In the arts field, the city provides a small amount of annual financial assistance, but the arts groups take responsibility for constructing their facilities and their programming.
However, there are other services in which the programming remains the city’s responsibility (e.g., youth and adult softball, youth basketball, youth football, youth volleyball, adult kickball, and adult tennis). The annual net cost to the city of directly delivering these programs equates to the cost of employing about five police officers.
If the city’s general fund requires trade-offs between these programs or reducing the number of police officers, it seems unlikely these programs will survive. Removing these subsidies from the general fund by transitioning responsibility for programming to community groups, as they do in the other programs, provides a financial pathway for them to survive and thrive.
While cost reductions may be the stimulus for more intentionally embracing coproduction partnerships, there are five other associated benefits that resonate with a park and recreation agency’s mission: rebuilding an ethos; building empathy for government and the agency’s mission; enhanced responsiveness; use of citizens’ talents; and enhanced opportunities to socialize.
It is often suggested that self-reliance is an American ethos — part of our country’s heritage, cultural tradition and personality. President Ronald Reagan alluded to this, saying, “We have let government take away many things we once considered were really ours to do voluntarily out of the goodness of our hearts and a sense of community pride and neighborliness.” From this perspective, it might be argued that the ‘municipalization’ of programs represents a threat to the country’s character, and coproduction restores voluntary action to its rightful place in the American ethos.
Coproduction has the potential to counter the distrust, apathy and indifference that pervades contemporary civic life. The engagement of participant groups may cement personal relationships with staff; give the group members a heightened appreciation for the quality of the services offered and the effort invested by employees; lead to a greater awareness of the content, costs and limited capacity of an agency’s service; increase group members’ self-confidence in becoming involved with government; and heighten awareness of a participating member’s own and their group’s potential political potency in supporting the park and recreation agency.
The Importance of Social Interaction
Even when intentions are good, the inertia of the status quo combined with the expediency of administrative convenience may result in inflexibility and a lack of responsiveness. Sometimes, professionals assume they know the needs of their clienteles without soliciting regular detailed feedback from target groups. Coproduction forces regular direct communication and may enhance responsiveness to a user group’s changing needs and preferences.
Every community has enthusiasts whose specialized experience and skills in specific recreation activities exceeds those available among an agency’s personnel. Typically, organizations regularly turn over their leadership. This enables leaders to avoid the burnout that sometimes afflicts agency staff who have long-term responsibility for a particular program. The group’s ownership of the service and the authority that empowers its leaders to direct the service for this relatively short period encourage the injection of high energy, new ideas and creativity.
Enduring friendships are made through engaging jointly in projects with others in a person’s leisure, work, spiritual or civic milieus. Coproduction requires individuals to work with others to plan, organize, fundraise, lead and deliver a service. This requires intense social interaction. When an agency directly delivers a service, individuals may derive some social benefit from using it. However, they are deprived of the opportunity to experience the deeper, intense relationships that may evolve from the interaction that coproduction necessitates. From this perspective, a policy of direct-service delivery, rather than coproduction, may be counterproductive.
John L. Crompton, Ph.D., is a University Distinguished Professor, Regents Professor and Presidential Professor for Teaching Excellence in the Department of Recreation, Park and Tourism Sciences at Texas A&M University and an elected Councilmember for the City of College Station.