The sports clubs in Germany have recorded an increase in membership since the end of the corona pandemic. On the other hand, the number of volunteers in the clubs is declining.
“We still see that the sports club is a popular place of engagement,” said Peter Schubert, project manager at ZiviZ (civil society in numbers) on Deutschlandfunk. According to a survey from 2022, most volunteers are active in sports. “But if we look at the last ten years, we see that the proportion of organizations in sport is decreasing. That doesn’t mean that there are fewer sports clubs because the number of organizations is increasing overall. But that means that commitment is increasing also shifted to other fields that are becoming more popular.”
Education and the environment compete with sport
According to Schubert, around 29 million people in Germany do voluntary work. In the past ten years, the fields of education and the environment have been very popular. “These are fields that then compete with sport.” With their commitment today, many wanted to make a contribution to society and work on content, said Schubert.
There are several reasons for this. One of them is the changed mobility behavior of people. “People move much more frequently and sometimes join a club here, sometimes join a club there, or no longer join a club at all, but rather in an informal initiative. Overall, they are no longer so strongly tied to a place and therefore no longer to the locally active club.”
Declining involvement in 27 percent of sports clubs
In 2012, 25 percent of the organizations in which volunteers worked were sports clubs. This proportion has now fallen to 22 percent. In addition, the clubs would have problems to bind volunteers. 27 percent of sports clubs also stated that voluntary work was declining. “There is no other field of engagement, be it leisure, culture, social affairs, health care or education, where such a high proportion of organizations say we have fewer people who are involved in our organization,” said Schubert.
One reason for this is the corona pandemic, in which people discovered other ways of spending their free time, according to Schubert. In addition, there are more and more people who meet informally for sports, without a club. “In addition, there is also the development of commercialization in sport. There are more and more commercial providers in sport, such as fitness studios, who tap people.”
More and more young people are volunteering
On the other hand, the development that more and more young people are volunteering in sport is gratifying. “We don’t have a generation problem,” said Schubert. “But of course we have a break due to the changed mobility behavior because people then move away in young adulthood and are no longer involved in the club.”
However, the sports club could also represent an opportunity here, namely to enable people to connect to a new place of residence after moving. “Of course you have to say that not every club has a distinct culture of welcoming new people. You have to take a critical look at that,” said Schubert. “And then a lot of clubs have to think about how to make it easy for new people to get started.”
Increased demands on volunteers
According to Schubert, another reason for fewer volunteers in sport is the increased requirement profile. “Maybe it’s not professionalization, but of course there’s still an increasing demand on people who say I’d like to work as a coach in a club. And that means, of course, you have to look at how you can meet the qualification requirements, which of course all have their purpose, to bring them into line with the increasing expectations of committed, also low-threshold tasks.”
2023-05-29 23:22:44
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