The article aims to establish whether Polish non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are important providers of social welfare services, and whether local authorities perceive them as partners in the implementation of this type of projects. The significance of NGOs is measured with the amount of social welfare grants they received between 2006 and 2011 and with the number of NGOs offering social welfare services that were active in that period. To test the research hypotheses, a trend analysis and a panel regression model are used. The research findings show that NGOs are becoming increasingly important to local governments as their partners in the field of social welfare, as well as a strong correlation between the number of NGOs in the area and the level of local governments’ grants for NGOs on the one hand and economic indicators such as GDP and the rate of unemployment on the other.