Voluntary and Unpaid Work in Sports Clubs 1989: Leaders

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 (dealt with in this study description). # The quantitative survey is a postal questionnaire survey comprising a representative sample of approx. 1000 club leaders in four selected municipalities (two rural municipalities, one urban municipality and one metropolitan municipality): Ballerup, Brønderslev, Ejby and Ølgod. The questionnaire contains questions concerning background information, content of the work as a leader, recruitment of the leaders, motives for becoming a leader, attitudes to the job as a leader, and problems involved in being a leader. In addition, information is obtained about the clubs the leaders of which take part in the survey (cf. DDA-5305). This means that there are two survey materials: a 'leader survey' and a 'club survey'