A Community Services Budget

Voluntary and nonprofit organizations, private firms, and public agencies provide and produce many of the same goods and services at the local level. Consequently, the adequacy, equity, and efficiency of the local public sector and the aggregate performance of the three sectors cannot be fully assessed without accounting for the effects of all sectors. A multisectoral framework or "community services budget" is proposed in this article to facilitate comparative research and achieve a better empirical and normative understanding of how the three sectors contribute to the total provision and distribution of urban goods and services in a community.