Junge Welt: Lobbying in the Chancellery – 07/03/2025

Columbus discovered America, Konrad Zuse the computer and the new federal government volunteering. The volunteers were never before in the history of the Federal Republic with their own Minister of State in the Chancellery. Social policy belongs there. “This includes culture, sport and volunteering,” said the newly appointed CDU state minister Christiane Schenderlein at the end of her first public appearance in a new function. Representatives of organized sport will have rubbed their eyes in astonishment. At the German Olympic Sports Confederation (DOSB), one thought that I had won a desired lover position primarily for top and competitive sports.

Error. Chancellor Friedrich Merz (CDU) will not only make a good word for medal sports, and Schenderlein’s attention must be competed. With whom exactly, it was clear from her first statement. In the first place she called the voluntary fire brigades, followed by the clubs of music and theater life, environmental and nature conservation, neighborhood initiatives and volunteers in nursing, pastoral care and care in need.

Only then did she come to the sporty. More precisely: to the more than 86,000 clubs that “promote cooperation across social borders”. Like all other clubs, a promise applies: the new government will operate an “active volunteer policy”. She will support, promote and strengthen volunteering. All volunteers, including around eight million in sports alone, “deserve the recognition they deserve”.

This is music in the ears of Jan Holze, board member of the German Foundation for Engagement and Volunteering (Dseer). The foundation, founded in 2020, has committed itself to supporting clubs so that they can gain committed staff, will be legally advised if necessary and to be able to obtain funding. »Although this new office is officially› for sports and volunteering ‹. However, I assume that this name does not mean prioritization and both sides are treated equally, «explains Holze opposite jW. He expects the same from a new committee in the Bundestag, which has recently been called “Committee on Sports and Voluntary”, instead of “sports committee”, like previously. For the still young foundation with its almost two dozen specialist advisory boards from the entire spectrum of volunteer work, another good omen, after the volunteering has so far been more likely to have a existence in the sub -committee for “civic engagement”.

Not only whether the new terminology sees wood for volunteering an enormous “upgrade” and above all “a huge opportunity”. The employees of the Federal Foundation hope that athletes will finally be put into the bureaucratic thicket so that volunteers are no longer deterred by a large number of difficult -to -understand requirements. According to a study, each club must have an average of six and a half hours a week or 42 days a year to complete bureaucratic tasks. The experts also call for sufficient qualification offers so that the club board members in particular are familiar with the legal rules. “These are practical two sides of the same medal,” says Holze. “It would be ensured that volunteer work can concentrate more on the actual, committed people stay on board and add new ones.”

The latest sports development report (SEB) has promoted how much this topic also deals with sports clubs. Missing staff in volunteering now threatens almost a fifth of the clubs existential, that is more than 17,500. Between 2014 and 2019 alone, a million volunteers were lost to them. The tendency stops. The new lobby in the Chancellery is also all the more important for the “little sport”. So far, the new head of government is little interested in the “big”. The Sports Promotion Act of the traffic light government landed in the drawer. And another disappointment: The billion promised by the federal government to renovate sports facilities is not flowed annually as hoped for by the DOSB – but only gradually until 2029.