“Illuminating. . . Dunning compels us to consider how promises of grassroots empowerment ended up maintaining the racialized and economic boundaries that imbricate the urban poor. . . . [She] leaves us with the dispiriting conclusion that the enlarged role of nonprofits has failed to mitigate and has even worsened urban inequality."

The Baffler

"Bold, powerful. . . [Dunning's] sober, carefully researched, and elegantly crafted book provides a salutary complication of the Tocquevillian myth that still colors much conventional thinking about the US nonprofit sector: that there is an easy and clearly intelligible congruence between democratic vitality in the United States and the nation’s rich associational life. It is difficult to read Nonprofit Neighborhoods without one’s faith in that congruence being permanently shaken."

Stanford Social Innovation Review

"Nonprofit Neighborhoods adds great value to the long-ongoing discussion and healthy debate about the best way to think of the relationship between civil society and the state. . . Dunning’s book generally and convincingly concludes that publicly funding locally based nonprofit groups to implement policy has, in the end, failed to achieve a more-inclusive government, to reduce urban poverty and inequality, and to dismantle racism."

Philanthropy Daily

"The lessons that Nonprofit Neighborhoods offers on missed opportunity after missed opportunity seem particularly valuable and relevant today."

Philanthropy News Digest

"Dunning’s history helps us see how the federal government’s administrative structure for anti-poverty programs—theorized by social science–driven philanthropists and established by public policymakers—ultimately served to perpetuate urban poverty."

Public Books

“Nonprofit Neighborhoods takes us to the frontlines of the government and philanthropic grantsmanship, municipal power brokering, and street-level protest that brought an evolving, multi-layered infrastructure of “public-private partnership” to Boston’s working-class communities of color starting in the 1960s—promising to resolve problems of poverty with improved social services in the face of widening structural divides. Persuasively argued and analytically nuanced, it tracks the continuities as well as the gradually unfolding transformations in urban policy, politics, and governance that link the social democratic aspirations of Great Society liberalism to the social austerity of our neoliberal age. Dunning provides important insights to all engaged in struggles against inequality—as scholars, policy advocates, practitioners, and activists.”

Alice O’Connor, University of California, Santa Barbara

“Nonprofit Neighborhoods is a revelation. Through a rich archival study of urban renewal in Boston, Dunning elegantly reconstructs how public projects came to be organized around grants and funding competitions. Decentralization and community participation were enhanced, but key decisions remained in the hands of city officials, foundation officers, and increasingly private lenders. The result is an eye-opening analysis of how policy reform transformed democratic governance.”

Elisabeth S. Clemens, University of Chicago

“Nonprofit Neighborhoods is a timely and original account of how the federal government has delegated urban policymaking, social service provision, and anti-poverty efforts to the private sector. This eye-opening book explains the proliferation of urban nonprofits —a distinctive feature of the American welfare state—and offers a sobering critique of the limitations of neighborhood-based solutions to persistent urban inequality.”

Thomas J. Sugrue, New York University

“Nonprofit Neighborhoods makes a paradigm-shifting contribution to the urban and policy history of the second half of the twentieth century. In her important interrogation into the nature of public-private partnerships, Dunning provides important insight into the changing nature of state power and the persistence of structural inequality. Lucidly written and deeply researched, this is an excellent book, poised to recast several scholarly fields.”

Lily Geismer, Claremont McKenna College

“Among the many intesting questions about the history of America’s cities, there are a few democracy-consequential questions whose answers literally define the future. In Nonprofit Neighborhoods, Dunning asks and answers morally uneasy and politically impolite questions such as: Why has the concentration of nonprofits in Black communities perpetuated not alleviated inequality? and How have these nonprofit neighborhoods become ‘spaces of inclusion and exclusion’? With precision, clarity, and subtly, Dunning tells a story of government and private power exerted upon and even undermining nonprofit neighborhoods. This sweeping history is a compelling cartography of power, cities, and race as well as a hopeful map for what America might be—if we but learned from the past.”

Cornell William Brooks, Harvard University

"An exceptional piece of scholarship. . . . scholars have long appreciated the fact that social welfare policy is implemented on the ground by formal nonprofit organizations. Nonprofits have, in turn, become institutionalized as providers of social services. However, Dunning breaks new ground by showing how these taken-for-granted arrangements developed over time, how a diverse group of institutions played a role in cementing them, and what the consequences have been for residents of disadvantaged neighborhoods."

Social Service Review

"Claire Dunning’s book, Nonprofit Neighborhoods, presents a thoughtful critique of the ability of neighborhood nonprofit organizations to address entrenched problems of racism, poverty, and inequality. Using Boston as the focus, Dunning brings a keen scholarly eye to that city’s various urban revitalization and community development initiatives, both locally initiated and funded through an array of federal programs. The book presents a thorough, well-written, and detailed descriptive history of Boston’s efforts, starting in the 1960s, that created a robust group of neighborhood nonprofit organizations."

Journal of Urban Affairs

"This case study of Boston and its environs focuses on a city often ranked among the 10 most segregated in the US. Dunning notes that nonprofit and community organizations have made significant efforts to ameliorate substandard housing in areas predominantly inhabited by Black and brown minorities . . . Recommended."

Choice