Voluntary and Unpaid Work in Sports Clubs 1989: Clubs

The basis of club sports has always been the voluntary and unpaid work by leaders; but will it also be possible to base sports club leadership on this ideal in the future? The sports clubs state that one of the greatest problems is the lack of leaders. Parts of the leadership work (instruction and coaching of the club members) have become more and more professionalized, changes of the various sports and the organization make new demands on the leaders, and to an increased extent society expects great things from the clubs, expectations which the voluntary leaders may have difficulty in living up to. # Thus, the general purpose of this research project is to examine and map out to what an extent and under which conditions club sports may in the future be based on voluntary and unpaid work. For this purpose the project makes an attempt at answering the following questions: How is the voluntary and unpaid work characterized; who are the voluntary and unsalaried leaders; why do they take on voluntary and unpaid work; what does the voluntary and unpaid work imply; what are the conditions of the voluntary and unpaid work in the clubs? # The research project consists of a theoretical examination of 'voluntary and unpaid work', a qualitative survey comprising a historical survey of leadership in nine sports clubs and interviews with 20 leaders from the same clubs, as well as a quantitative survey (cf.DDA-1571). # In this part-survey information is obtained about the clubs the leaders of which took part in DDA-1571. This means that there are two survey materials: a 'leader survey' and a 'club survey'. # This material consists of a postal questionnaire survey of a representative sample of 112 clubs in four selected municipalities (two rural municipalities, an urban municipality, and a metropolitan municipality): Ejby, Ølgod, Brønderslev and Ballerup. # The questionnaire contains questions concerning background information; activities; number of members, distribution according to age and sex; competition conditions; participation in various events; purpose and structure, earlier and now; financial conditions, income and expenses; leaders, distribution according to age and sex, lack of leaders; affiliation; and relation to the municipality