a. Bodies receiving public funds or benefits.

Even before the above stated amendment, Tennessee courts construed the Act to cover the records of nongovernmental bodies in receipt of public funds and of advisory boards of quasi-governmental bodies. In Memphis Publishing v. Cherokee Children & Family Services, 87 S.W.3d 67 (Tenn. 2002), the Tennessee Supreme Court held that a "functional equivalency test" should be used to determine if the Act would apply to a private company retained by a government agency to perform governmental services. Whether a private entity operates as the functional equivalent of a government entity, so as to render its records subject to the Act, will be judged in light of the totality of the circumstances. Factors relevant to this analysis are: 1) level of government funding, 2) extent of government involvement or control, and 3) whether the entity was created by the government. However, not all records of non-government entities who assist government operation will be public. In early 2011, the Tennessee Supreme Court ruled a nonprofit foundation that merely acted as a bookkeeper, paying a university medical school facility for services the facility rendered as a public hospital and securing reimbursement from the school for payments to the facility was not the functional equivalent of a governmental agency. Gautreaux v. Internal Medicine Education Foundation, Inc., 336 S.W.3d 526 (Tenn. 2011).

A private company that managed a city sports arena under a contract with a metropolitan government acted as the functional equivalent of that governmental agency, because it assumed responsibility for the day-to-day operation of the arena. Allen v. Day, 213 S.W.3d 244 (Tenn. Ct. App. 2002).

Cases addressing this issue but decided before Cherokee Children & Family Services, and therefore before the 2008 amendment, may be of questionable validity.  However, these cases include:  Tenant subleases of city-owned property are open records. Creative Restaurants Inc. v. Memphis, 795 S.W.2d 672 (Tenn. Ct. App. 1990) (tenant subleases of city-owned property in the possession of private, for-profit corporations that served as the city's leasing agent are public records under the Act). But see Webber v. Bolling, C.A. No. 177 (Tenn. Ct. App. December 13, 1989) (working papers of certified public accountants retained by Anderson County to conduct an audit of a department of the county government were not subject to disclosure under the Act). The payroll records of a public hospital have been held to be open under the Act. Cleveland Newspapers Inc. v. Bradley County Memorial Hospital Board of Directors, 621 S.W.2d 763 (Tenn. Ct. App. 1981), cert. denied, (Tenn. 1981) (holding that only the legislature can designate records confidential and that a hospital created by the state legislature and financed with public funds is an arm of the state carrying on a governmental function). However, employee personnel records of a hospital operated by a nonprofit corporation under a 50-year lease agreement with Shelby County are not subject to the Act. Memphis Publ'g Co. v. Health Care Corp., 799 S.W.2d 225 (Tenn. Ct. App. 1990) (reasoning that hospital that was not created by the general assembly and never claimed governmental immunity from tort actions was a private rather than governmental entity).