23
• The security of financial planning is less reliable for the voluntary welfare asso-
ciations.63 The shortage of public resources and the market-oriented access to
social services evoke new uncertainties and set the associations under pressure
of adjustment.64 Public promotion funds are cut or have to be opened without be-
ing extended financially to private, for-profit organizations, e.g. object-related
support for nursing homes.
Integrating of self-help and voluntary work:
Self-help and voluntary work still have great and an even increased importance in Ger-
many.65 At the same time the voluntary welfare associations are loosing members like
other big organizations (churches, political parties, trade unions).
For example Workers' Welfare Service (AWO)66:
• 1.1.2004 450.000 members,
• 1.1.2005 430.000 members.
Since 1977 until 2004 the number of self-help organizations in the voluntary welfare
associations rose from 9.828 to 34.923.67
Organisationen
63 See to the changed structure of funding: Dahme/ Wohlfahrt 2000: 15-16.
64 Backer/Naegele/Bispinck/Hofemann/Neubauer 2007, Bd. 2: 545-547.
65 See the general information about voluntary welfare associations and voluntary societal commitment:
BAGFW 2002: 70-89.
66 BAGFW 2004: 66; http://www.awo.org/awo-deutschland/zahlen-und-fakten.html (last direct access:
July 9 2009).
67 BAGFW 2004:17.