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For non-profit organizations (NPOs) external funding is an essential resource. Studies highlight how control is attributed to funders and so external funding threatens the autonomy of the recipient organization. The purpose of this study is to investigate how external control can be structured and exercised, and to explore how control interacts with organizational autonomy.

The research is based on interviews and participant observations with NPOs and their funders over a period of time. It reports from four different funding-relations: contract-based, social investment, gift-funded and civil society–public partnership. The concept of organizational discretion is used to analyse how control and autonomy are interconnected in these relationship.

The analysis illustrates the value in exposing the different discretionary boundaries related to external control and how control can become a sparring partner in the organization's striving for autonomy. A concluding argument is that control and autonomy are each other's companions rather than antagonists. The study leads us to question a general assumption that NPOs strive to avoid resource dependence and external control but instead may use such control to develop strategies for independence and self-realization.

The empirical material is unique as it includes voices of recipient organizations and funders, and offers a comparison of different controlling-relations. The study presents an innovative analytical framework based on the concepts of discretionary space and reasoning, which supports a critical discussion regarding the idea of external control as detrimental to the autonomy of NPOs.

The paper emphasises the increasing importance and the role of destination benchmarking for the tourism industry. The first part of the paper critically discusses an existing benchmarking concept for destinations, namely “The Tourism Barometer” developed in the new German Federal States. In analysing the main weaknesses of this barometer approach an alternative way is shown towards a potential methodological re‐development of benchmarking exercises which can now include aspects of value generation for tourists and at the same time sharpen the analytical measurement of factors of production underlying the process of value creation in tourism. Thus, the proposed destination benchmarking model attempts to simultaneously integrate the related tourism supply and demand forces in the form of both, the destination specific resource use as well as the perceived customer value measured in terms of destination specific customer satisfaction. The proposed benchmarking system works with a battery of indicators which are being further employed in a data envelopment analysis (DEA). Based on empirical destination data from Austrian winter resorts a multivari‐ate DEA‐Model is presented, thus allowing an expost calculation of efficiency pattern in the creation of customer value. The concluding part of the paper explains the usefulness of data envelopment analysis for the field of destination management.