Speakers
Description
The issue of an erosion of voluntary engagement in sports clubs in local communities in Germany has been discussed for a long time. The causes for this are often seen in long-term social modernisation processes, which are also accompanied by a "structural change in voluntary engagement". The lecture takes up the multi-layered discussion about the "crisis of volunteering" in the local sports club and discusses it with a view to more recent empirical findings on voluntary engagement in sports (clubs) in Germany before and during the Corona pandemic. The empirical basis is formed by the results of a research project that we carried out at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin and which was funded by the Federal Institute of Sports Science (BISp); cooperation partner of the project was the German Olympic Sports Confederation (DOSB). The empirical results show that voluntary engagement in sports clubs was already tending to decline before the Corona pandemic and that this trend continued during the pandemic. Apparently, it is becoming increasingly difficult for the lifeworld-integrated sports club system to rely on the early socialised and long-tracked club career as a mode of attracting and retaining voluntary engagement. It will be discussed that the contemporary development of opportunity structures for the type of "new" or "modernised voluntary work" in sports clubs should be central so that members can and want to participate in the self-organisation of sports clubs in local communities.
