Abstract
The kingdom of Denmark is a constitutional monarchy, consisting of Denmark and the two autonomous areas: the Faroe Islands in the North Atlantic and Greenland. This analysis does not include the latter two parts of the kingdom. Denmark has 5.6 million inhabitants spread over approx. 43,000 km2.
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Notes
- 1.
The organisation was formed by an amalgamation of two organisations, both of which had roots in shooting and gymnastic movement from the 1800s.
- 2.
Sport clubs offering gymnastics often include a number of keep-fit activities, such as spinning, aerobics and Zumba.
- 3.
Statistically significant differences in general participation (women > men) are found, however, when taking into account a middle response option (“I do sport, but not for the time being”), which is otherwise included as a negative answer. Significantly more women give this answer than men.
- 4.
Data obtained from Statistics Denmark’s publicly available data file on government cultural appropriations (BEVIL01).
- 5.
In relation to the figures presented here, it is worth noting that subsidiaries of multi-sport clubs are counted as individual clubs. This is due to the manner in which they are categorised by DIF, one of the main umbrella organisations for organised sport in Denmark. This means that the proportion of multi-sport clubs is less than 31 %, but we do not have data from recent surveys telling us how much less. A study from 1997 estimated that multi-sport clubs make up around a quarter of the population of sport clubs, but since then there is evidence that the population of single-sport clubs has grown somewhat faster than the population of multi-sport clubs (Ibsen 2006).
- 6.
This means that, within the group of volunteers, some receive remuneration that is not taxable. In most cases this remuneration is relatively modest, but in some cases it can be substantial, and in these instances it is debatable whether they can be categorised as volunteers. Due to the lack of data here, they will, however, be treated as volunteers.
- 7.
There is also a third, more indeterminable group of volunteers working with other tasks such as maintenance, administration and a number of ad hoc tasks. Due to large variations in the way clubs interpret this third group, it will not be included in the analyses below because the figures are subject to considerable uncertainty.
- 8.
Regular volunteers are defined as volunteers who provide a continuous effort for the sport club at least once every second week.
- 9.
A large proportion of these clubs are golf clubs.
- 10.
A study on how to manage sport clubs to facilitate the recruitment of volunteers establishes some guidelines for sport clubs aiming to improve their volunteer appeal. Among other things, the study recommends sport clubs to aim at involving members in decision-making and to delegate tasks and decisions to multiple committees or to volunteers (Østerlund 2012). These recommendations are in line with the arguments presented above that active and committed members are more likely to become volunteers than less active members, and that ad hoc positions in relative terms are the easiest to fill.
- 11.
The figures reported in the table derive from a multilevel regression analysis conducted in SPSS. The dependent variable is an index ranging from 0 to 100, with 0 referring to the lowest level of participation, and 100 referring to the highest.
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Ibsen, B., Østerlund, K., Laub, T. (2015). Sport Clubs in Denmark. In: Breuer, C., Hoekman, R., Nagel, S., van der Werff, H. (eds) Sport Clubs in Europe. Sports Economics, Management and Policy, vol 12. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-17635-2_6
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