Government departments and educational institutions relate in a variety of ways to non-governmental organizations that provide programs, and to community participation in programming.175 There are at least three common patterns. (1) Governments provide grants to independent non-profit literacy groups, or to organizations with broader purposes that include students as members; program arrangements and accountability are defined on a contractual basis. (2) Educational institutions make available to voluntary organizations a range of support services, including tutor training, learning materials, and public awareness efforts. (3) Educational institutions recruit volunteer tutors from the community; they may also assemble community advisory boards.

The first pattern intuitively seems the most likely to allow "autonomy." It is striking that grants to independent organizations have not been the predominant development in the recent expansion of literacy activity. Only in Manitoba and Ontario have independent programs been a major component of programming increases. In Ontario, funding for institutional programs is still much greater than for community programs (there is about three and a half times as much Ontario Basic Skills funding for community colleges, as Ontario Community Literacy grants). In Québec, advocacy for autonomous programs has not been effective. Although the groupes populaires did ground-breaking advocacy work, they have not benefited from government initiatives, which have given the commissions scolaires the major role in literacy activity, and "restricted the expansion of the existing [popular] groups and prevented the formation of new organizations."176 The institutions have claimed the largest share of the expansion of literacy programming — including both efforts to extend literacy work through existing institutions into the community, and efforts to develop programming in workplaces.177

175 Cf. Richard Darville, "Prospects for Adult Literacy Policy in British Columbia," Policy Explorations 4:4 , 1989 (ED 320 019).
176 Miller, "The Approach of Popular Literacy Groups in Québec."
177 We might speculate that this pattern is explained by politicians and civil servants viewing community programs as potential sources of political criticism. Community programs may work not only to provide ways for people to develop individual skills in familiar local settings, but also to provide ways for people to express distress and anger and demands for change, and to strengthen politically the collectivities of which they are part. This line of speculation would draw attention to the fact that in Québec, which has had politically and fiscally conservative government since the mid-1980s, the "popular" groups (which don't call themselves "community-based") have pushed government for a strategy to deal with illiteracy, which necessarily links literacy policies to employment, poverty and social rights policies. Ontario groups seem less based in a sense of popular mobilization. Or we might speculate that since literacy is now driven by economic interests, governments will ensure that it is provided through governmentally-managed structures. All such speculations point to the need for serious political history of literacy policy to be written.
173 Declarat