Scarcity of resources in German non-profit sport clubs

Non-profit sport clubs face several challenges including those relating to human resources, financial capabilities, networks and infrastructural elements. In order for clubs to realise their capacity to respond to encountered challenges, it is imperative for club executives and sport federations to have an improved understanding of the clubs’ resource structure and ability to deploy resources. Drawing on the concept of organisational capacity as well as Resource Dependency Theory, the objectives of this study are to provide empirical evidence of the resources of non-profit sport clubs and to show that these clubs are characterised by scarce resources. A large sport club survey in Germany (n = 13,068) was used as the data set for this study. The results indicate that sport clubs seem to have organisational capacity, as they have many different types of resources at their disposal that which can be ascribed to four capacity dimensions. The analysis of longitudinal data reveals changes in resources that indicate particularly human resources (volunteers) and infrastructure resources become more scarce over the course of time.