SPORT 1913 - 2013

part two_CHAPTER 7

process and 3 other unions applied for the member status. Thus the CSIT had all and all 44 organizations in its membership categories from 34 countries Two oldest member unions were the Swiss SATUS from 1874 and the Austrian ASKÖ from 1892. Two youngest members were the Romanian CSE and the Russian ATOMS- PORT both from 2002. In 1990, the CSIT had 53.234 million in- dividual members. Because of the breakdown of the former Soviet PROFSPORT at the end of 1991, the number fell down to 3.720 million. For 20 years, new member organizations have joined the CSIT. At the same time, most of the old member unions have increased their indi- vidual memberships. This has raised the num- ber of people connected with the CSIT either as traditional individual members (5.234 mil- lion) or so called registered clients (202.990 million) to 208.260 million. When the Chinese CWCIE joined the organization, the number of individuals involved in the CSIT exploded. This certainly will create challenges to meet the needs of all the members. It was found, too, that 21 member organi- zations had in 2010 altogether 48 155 sport clubs and other types of local units. Data was missing for 14 full members. Out of all the sport clubs of the 21 studied unions, two thirds (32 800 clubs) belonged to three Italian sport organizations. In terms of memberships, a special atten- tion should be given to the positive develop- ment of sport for all contribution conducted

particularly in Italy (the UISP, the AICS and the ACSI) and in Austria (the ASKÖ). The unions in these countries have remarkably increased the number of individual and collective (sport clubs) memberships. There are grounds to state that obviously, these unions have been able to develop their sport for programs in the ways they have become to increasingly attract new population groups which had not been in- volved in their activities before. Results indicated that in 2010, there were altogether 1 066 paid people working in 22 member unions of the CSIT. Out of them 282 had been hired in central organizations and 784 in district organizations. The three biggest employers were the Italian UISP (N=322), the Russian ROSSIYA (N=212) and the Austrian ASKÖ (N=103). The data about paid personnel in regard to the Chinese CWCIE was missing. About the flow of money, the results showed that the total sum of the budgets of the 20 studied organizations was 43.830 mil- lion euro. Because only 11 unions answered to the budget questions in 1990 and they were not necessarily the same members giving an- swers in 2010, it was not possible to make comparisons with the figures in 2010. The CSIT member unions differ not only in terms of the size of their annual budgets but also in regard of the structure of income finance of the budgets. There were more “in- dependent” members and “more state and public sector” connected members: some unions received from 75 to even 90 per cent of their income money from the public sector.

This means mostly the state, but to some de- gree also the municipalities or district organi- zations of the public sector. On the other hand, there were member unions which did not receive at all or received only a minimum percentage of their budgets from that sector. It is good that the state and municipali- ties support voluntary sport organizations be- cause they carry important social responsibil- ity while implementing their sport programs. But on the other hand the issue calls for care- fulness: how is it with the autonomy and in- dependence of sport organization if it gets most of its funding from the state? Can the state maybe influence the sport policy of the voluntary organization too much, in this case? Not necessarily, that could be the answer. But is it always the case? What if the state stops the funding totally? Would it put an end to the functions of the kind of voluntary organiza- tions? The answers to these kinds of questions include that there are risks, too, when the state subsidies are big. By and large the study showed that the CSIT is in a pretty good stage of development. However, it is facing necessary decisions in terms of memberships and sport strategies compared with those of the past. Namely, two kinds of memberships seem to have emerged in the organization. The first one represents the traditional sport club based membership and the second one, the so-called registered client type of membership. In addi- tion, there’s a possibility for a third kind of participation, particularly in competitive

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