Partnership for Public Service

Background

The Partnership was founded by Samuel J. Heyman in 2001. After graduating from Harvard in 1963, Heyman worked for then-U.S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy in the Kennedy administration. This experience had a lasting impact on Heyman: after amassing a fortune at his father’s real estate business Heyman Companies, Heyman decided to create a nonprofit organization that would encourage young people to work for the government by making government jobs more accessible.³

Heyman pledged $45 million to Partnership at its inception, which was closely followed by a $4 million pledge from the Annenberg Foundation.³

In a 2007 interview with the Chronicle of Philanthropy, Partnership president Max Stier complained about the declining interest in government jobs among young people. “When John F. Kennedy issued his call to service, to government, it was a lot simpler world. The president could actually move a nation in a way that is much harder to do today,” he said. He attributed the cause for low numbers of young federal workers at the time to a variety of reasons, including the Vietnam War causing the government to gain lasting negative connotation, the profitability of the private sector, a high number of federal employees eligible for retirement, slow hiring processes, and “politically appointed” agency leaders obstructing new hires.³

According to the same interview, Stier had apparently welcomed the way that the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center “really made the government relevant in people’s lives in a way it hadn’t been for a couple generations.” He added, “9/11 made us realize in fact we were at risk, and that the primary vehicle to address this challenge was our government.”³ He also advised that the American public should think of civil service workers in the same way that they think of the military.³

Activity

Stier stated that one of the “core principles” of the Partnership is to help the government become more efficient because it “does not have adequate metrics to allow it to understand its own effectiveness.”³

The Partnership for Public Service helped establish the Congressional Public Service Caucus, a caucus made up of Members of the House of Representatives that wish to promote policies that will persuade more people to work for the federal government.^{4 5} The Partnership has convinced multiple federal agencies to shorten their hiring methods by “eliminating many steps in the application process.”³

In 2005, the Partnership received a government grant of $600,000 to strengthen several university programs which aimed to hire graduating students as federal workers.³

In 2009, the Partnership took on most of the staff of the Council for Excellence in Government, a similar nonprofit that closed due to funding shortages. The Partnership also adopted some of the Council’s programs, such as leadership training programs for federal managers.⁶

The Partnership worked with both the Trump and the Clinton campaigns in the lead up to the 2016 presidential election to ensure that the future administration would be well-prepared for the appointee process according to their standards, regardless of the outcome.⁷

In December 2016, the Partnership joined efforts with the Washington Post to launch a program that tracks all government employees appointed by President Donald Trump. “This tracker will play a key role in holding the president-elect and the Senate accountable for ensuring the top leaders are in place to run our government effectively, keep our country safe and deliver critical services to the American people,” Partnership president Max Stier said at the time. “The data we gather with this tracker will also inform our reporting on the new administration,” senior politics editor at the Washington Post Steven Ginsberg added.⁸⁹

Initiatives

Call to Serve is an initiative by the Partnership for Public Service and the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) which facilitates cooperation between federal agencies and universities to promote government jobs to students.¹⁰¹¹

The Partnership runs the “Samuel J. Heyman Service to America Medals” program, often referred to as the “Sammies,” which presents medals and cash prizes to government employees to recognize them for their achievements in hopes that it will inspire more people to work in the government.¹²¹³

Excellence in Government is a fellowship program run by the Partnership which provides a leadership educational course to federal employees. ¹⁴

People

The Partnership for Public Service has over two dozen people on its advisory board, many of them holding high ranking positions in government, media, academia, and nonprofit organizations. ¹⁵

Max Stier is the president and CEO of the Partnership for Public Service. He has worked in various positions in the federal government. ¹⁶ In August 2017, Stier wrote an op-ed in the Chronicle of Philanthropy stressing to donors and private foundations that it is still important to support the federal government, and especially nonprofits that aid it such as his Partnership, even if they do not like the sitting president. ¹⁷

In 1995, Stier was hired by the Williams & Connolly law firm. While Stier was working for Williams & Connolly, the firm represented former President Bill Clinton during the Monica Lewinsky scandal.¹⁸ Future Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh worked for then-Independent Counsel Ken Starr, who wrote a report establishing grounds for Bill Clinton’s impeachment.¹⁹²⁰

Nearly twenty years later, in September 2019, the New York Times reported that Stier had alleged that Kavanaugh involved himself in an indecent sexual act during a college party when he was a student at Yale University.²¹ The female student involved in the alleged incident did not speak with Times reporters; the Times later appended an editor’s note stating that “friends say she does not recall the episode.”²² Stier’s account reportedly made it to the Times second-hand.²³

Funding

According to Partnership for Public Service’s latest IRS filing from 2017, the group reported $13.8 million in total revenues, $16.3 million in total expenditures, and $16.7 million in net assets. ²⁴ Since 2008, the Partnership has received $20.6 million in federal grants. ²⁵

Funding sources

Since 2002, the Partnership has received over $33 million from grantmaking foundations and other nonprofits: ²⁶