Environmental Organizations in Modern Germany by William T. Markham

Author:William T. Markham [Markham, William T.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Business & Economics, Development, Sustainable Development, History, Europe, Germany, Nature, Environmental Conservation & Protection, Social Science, Sociology, General
ISBN: 9781845454470
Google: zPht3efRbQgC
Publisher: Berghahn Books
Published: 2008-01-15T02:51:25+00:00

Potential Members, Donors, and Activists

Historically, environmental organizations have depended heavily on the efforts of volunteer activists and the support of members and donors, and the availability of these forms of support is a significant factor in how they respond to the challenges of the twenty-first century.

Volunteering and Giving in Germany

Germany has strong political parties, labor unions, and organized interest groups, but it does not have especially strong traditions of volunteer work and private donations.31 In part, this is a result of generous government subsidies for the arts, health and human services, and the churches, which are supported primarily through a state-collected church tax. For many years, this generous funding, now on the wane, made it easy for Germans to assume that private donations were not needed and that paid staff would attend to social problems. This does not mean that volunteer work and private donations are altogether absent. Recent studies rank Germany slightly above the European average—although well below the US—in both volunteer work and donations (Gensicke, Picot, and Geiss, 2005; Priller and Sommerfeld, 2005).

Obtaining donations and volunteers in Germany has been made more difficult since the mid 1990s by continuing economic stagnation, lack of growth in real wages, and high unemployment. Only crude estimates of the total volume of donations exist, but the available evidence suggests that the percentage of citizens who make charitable donations has not increased much since the early 1990s. And except for a jump in 2001, the year the euro was introduced, size of the average donation has remained stable even as inflation continued (Priller and Sommerfeld, 2005). Meanwhile, the number of organizations seeking donations has steadily increased. The total percentage of the population active in volunteer work has also remained about the same over the last decade (Gensicke, Picot, and Geiss, 2005).

Volunteering and Donating for Environmental Organizations

Recruiting volunteers and donations for environmental organizations has been rendered more difficult in recent years by changing perceptions of environmental problems.32 The absolute percentage of Germans who view environmental problems as important remains high, but other issues, such as unemployment and the performance of the economy, now receive higher importance rankings, and many citizens perceive environmental conditions as improved (see Chapter 7). National surveys also show that knowledgeable and engaged environmentalists constitute a small proportion of the population, and research by the organizations shows that even some of their supporters are only weakly committed to the cause.

German citizens are more apt to volunteer their services to church, social service, and community recreation groups than to environmental organizations. A recent survey conducted for the Ministry for Families, Seniors, Women, and Youth, for example, showed that 2.5 percent of persons over age fourteen claimed to engage in voluntary activity for environmental or animal protection organizations, a percentage essentially unchanged from a similar 1999 survey. Eleven percent volunteered in sports groups, 7 percent in schools, and 6 percent each in churches, culture and music, and social services (Gensicke, Picot, and Geiss, 2005). A somewhat higher percentage of the population reports simple membership in environmental groups.

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