Introduction
Over recent decades, nonprofit organizations have professionalized considerably in response to external pressures and internal capacity needs to become more “business-like” (Maier et al., Reference Maier, Meyer and Steinbereithner2016). This includes nonprofit organizations adopting professional standards, formal managerial routines, and a shift from volunteer to paid staff, including in leadership roles. In particular, the manner in which nonprofit leaders are compensated, and the implications of these choices, has attracted academic attention. Studies typically find that compensation levels reflect organizational size and complexity and market comparators, while links to performance are uneven across subsectors (e.g., Frumkin & Keating, Reference Frumkin and Keating2010; Grasse et al., Reference Grasse, Davis and Ihrke2014). On outcomes, the evidence highlights a governance and legitimacy tension, as higher executive pay can support managerial capacity. However, it can also affect stakeholders when they view compensation as misaligned with nonprofit norms (Balsam & Harris, Reference Balsam and Harris2014, Reference Balsam and Harris2018). While much of this literature focuses on the level and structure of executive pay, many nonprofit organizations also face the more basic professionalization choice of whether the executive director role remains voluntary or becomes a paid position (Horch & Schütte, Reference Horch and Schütte2009).
This choice has become particularly important in organizations whose activities depend heavily on member participation and volunteer labor. Recruiting and retaining volunteers has become a structural challenge for nonprofit organizations as time pressures and rising administrative burdens narrow the pool of willing participants (Hager & Brudney, Reference Hager and Brudney2011). Research links professionalization to volunteer management practices and, in some contexts, adverse reactions to visible executive pay (Balsam & Harris, Reference Balsam and Harris2018; Hwang & Powell, Reference Hwang and Powell2009), but there is little direct evidence on whether the pay status of the top executive itself is associated with subsequent volunteer recruitment and retention in member-based organizations.
The implications for addressing this challenge are theoretically ambiguous, as two perspectives generate opposing predictions. From a capacity-building perspective, paid leadership strengthens volunteer recruitment by formalizing functions that are hard to sustain in volunteer-run settings (Hwang & Powell, Reference Hwang and Powell2009). Motivation crowding theory, by contrast, cautions that paid leadership may crowd out engagement when experienced as controlling or as signaling that operations are now handled by professionals, but may crowd it in when experienced as supportive of members’ contributions (Bénabou & Tirole, Reference Bénabou and Tirole2003; Deci et al., Reference Deci, Koestner and Ryan1999; Frey & Jegen, Reference Frey and Jegen2001).
This study addresses that gap and empirically investigates these competing theoretical predictions by examining German sport clubs, a setting where the dynamics of professionalization and paid leadership are especially pronounced (Horch & Schütte, Reference Horch and Schütte2009). In a mixed field where member-governed associations coexist with commercial providers, clubs face heightened expectations of service quality and demands for marketing, partnerships, and facility operations that exceed volunteer capacity (Min, Reference Min2022; Rossi et al., Reference Rossi, Breuer and Feiler2020). Consequently, many clubs introduce paid managerial roles alongside traditional volunteer governance to secure the administrative and technical capacity required to remain credible and responsive (Horch & Schütte, Reference Horch and Schütte2009).
With almost 86,000 clubs nationwide, German sport clubs constitute one of the largest membership-based voluntary infrastructures worldwide, so the dynamics studied here speak to member-based nonprofit organizations facing similar professionalization pressures beyond sport. These developments raise two distinct questions. The first concerns the antecedents of professionalization: which nonprofit organizations choose to pay their executives? Prior research indicates this choice is not random but systematically related to organizational size, complexity, and resource pressures (Frumkin & Keating, Reference Frumkin and Keating2010; Horch & Schütte, Reference Horch and Schütte2009). The second, the focus of this study, concerns the consequences: once a club moves from a voluntary to a paid executive director, does its ability to recruit and retain volunteers change? The analysis therefore draws on longitudinal panel data from German sport clubs and estimates within-club changes in volunteering outcomes around the introduction of a paid ED, complemented by a propensity score matching approach that models clubs’ selection into paying their executive.
Theoretical framework and literature review
Professionalization in nonprofit organizations
The notion that nonprofit organizations are becoming increasingly “business-like” has gained prominence since the 1980s, emerging alongside new public management reforms and broader shifts in funding and accountability regimes (Maier et al., Reference Maier, Meyer and Steinbereithner2016). Although the character of the nonprofit sector remains contested, comparative research suggests a general tendency toward more business-like and professionalized forms of organizing (King, Reference King2017). Dart (Reference Dart2004) conceptualizes “business-like” nonprofit behavior along multiple dimensions, from business-oriented goals and service delivery to managerial practices and rhetoric. Within this shift, professionalization is the core mechanism through which nonprofits move from volunteer-dominated, informally governed organizations toward entities led by paid, credentialed staff embedded in formal structures and standardized routines (Hwang & Powell, Reference Hwang and Powell2009). The term occupationalization refers to the degree and process by which voluntary unpaid work is replaced or supplemented by paid work (Horch & Schütte, Reference Horch and Schütte2009).
This development, however, is far from uncontroversial. Proponents argue that business-like approaches make nonprofits more effective and efficient (Hwang & Powell, Reference Hwang and Powell2009; Kaplan, Reference Kaplan2001), whereas critics contend that they reshape the sector, threaten its distinctiveness, and fuel managerialism and bureaucratization (Maier et al., Reference Maier, Meyer and Steinbereithner2016). A related strand of this critical literature further cautions that increasingly business-like and managerial practices can contribute to mission drift, as organizations become more attentive to resource dependencies and the preferences of funders than to their original mission and member base (Bennett & Savani, Reference Bennett and Savani2011; Ebrahim et al., Reference Ebrahim, Battilana and Mair2014). This implies that professionalization may reshape not only how organizations operate but also their internal culture. Recent evidence underscores that such culture is consequential in German sport clubs (Mutz et al., Reference Mutz, Braun, Blessing, Hilpisch and Burrmann2026), which raises the question of whether introducing paid leadership diminishes or preserves this community-oriented ethos. Overall, these perspectives imply that leadership occupationalization can be both a capacity-building response to rising demands and a normative shift affecting expectations for voluntary contributions.
Professionalization in nonprofit sport clubs
Nonprofit sport clubs remain key providers of sport participation in many European countries, typically operating as member-based associations that rely heavily on voluntary work (Seippel et al., Reference Seippel, Breuer, Elmose-Østerlund, Feiler, Perényi, Piątkowska and Scheerder2023). Over recent decades, competition from commercial providers has intensified, exposing many clubs to organizational and financial strain (Rossi et al., Reference Rossi, Breuer and Feiler2020) and fueling debate over whether and how far clubs must professionalize to remain viable.
Building on this debate, Dowling et al. (Reference Dowling, Edwards and Washington2014) distinguish three forms of professionalization: organizational (individual clubs shifting from volunteer-run associations to more bureaucratic, managerially led organizations), systemic (field-level changes driven by state policy, commercialization, or governance reforms), and occupational (the development of sport management and coaching into credentialed professions). Occupational professionalization has attracted the most attention, as introducing paid managers most visibly confronts the traditional volunteer ethos of club sport. Horch and Schütte (Reference Horch and Schütte2009), for example, documented a notable gap between the often-invoked “pressure to occupationalize” and the still limited spread of salaried management positions in German clubs and federations.
Lang et al. (Reference Lang, Piller, Schmid, Lamprecht and Nagel2022) show that different types of professionalization in Swiss sport clubs face distinct problems, as clubs combining paid staff on and off the field recruit and retain members more easily but face heightened financial strain, whereas volunteer-based clubs that adopt formalized HRM and strategic practices report fewer problems attracting board members and coaches. This suggests that some pressures linked to professionalization can be mitigated through organizational reform, even without salaried staff. However, little research has directly examined the transition from a volunteer to a paid leadership position and its consequences for the performance of nonprofit sport clubs.
Executive leadership
Leadership characteristics and influence on performance
Prior research has extensively examined how leadership characteristics shape the performance of for-profit firms. This work has primarily focused on chief executive officers (CEOs) and other top executives. Studied attributes include socio-demographic traits such as gender and educational background, as well as work-related characteristics such as international or overseas experience (e.g., Cao et al., Reference Cao, Fu and Li2024; Zhang et al., Reference Zhang, Zheng, Lam, Fu and Li2022). To approximate causal effects, many studies exploit leadership transitions and estimate difference-in-differences models that compare organizational performance before and after the appointment of leaders with different profiles, thereby treating the arrival of a new CEO as a quasi-exogenous shock to the organization’s strategic direction.
Research on nonprofit organizations, by contrast, emphasizes leadership styles and their behavioral implications, with transformational and transactional styles linked to employee commitment, organizational citizenship behavior, and perceived effectiveness (e.g., Almas et al., Reference Almas, Chacón-Fuertes and Pérez-Muñoz2020). One element studied from several perspectives is executive compensation.
Executive compensation
Executive compensation in the nonprofit sector has attracted attention because it challenges norms that prioritize mission over monetary reward. Paying executives on market-based principles is difficult to reconcile with expectations of altruism and with the legal non-distribution constraint intended to limit private benefit.
A growing body of research examines how nonprofit executive pay is set, including the organizational, market, and governance factors that shape compensation levels (Frumkin & Keating, Reference Frumkin and Keating2010; Grasse et al., Reference Grasse, Davis and Ihrke2014), and its consequences for stakeholder behaviors such as donations and voluntary engagement (Balsam & Harris, Reference Balsam and Harris2018). However, while this literature provides important insights into compensation levels and their correlates, it offers less direct evidence on the more basic professionalization move of changing executive leadership from a voluntary role into a paid position in member-based organizations.
Volunteer recruitment and retention
As nonprofit organizations across sectors and regions report growing difficulties in recruiting and retaining volunteers, and thus in sustaining the volunteer capacity that supplies the unpaid contributors needed to deliver activities and govern the organization, a substantial body of research has examined this challenge (e.g., Hager & Brudney, Reference Hager and Brudney2011; Studer & von Schnurbein, Reference Studer and Von Schnurbein2013). At the individual level, the propensity to volunteer is shaped by socio-demographic characteristics, resources, and motives, with prosocial and altruistic orientations especially strong predictors (Dury et al., Reference Dury, De Donder, De Witte, Buffel, Jacquet and Verté2015; Einolf & Chambré, Reference Einolf and Chambré2011). Functional approaches further emphasize that sustained engagement is more likely when volunteer roles fit dominant motives and support a positive volunteer identity (Finkelstein, Reference Finkelstein2008; Güntert et al., Reference Güntert, Strubel, Kals and Wehner2016).
Because volunteering rests on intrinsic and prosocial motives, these motives can be affected by how volunteers experience the rewards and recognition attached to their contributions. Motivation crowding theory suggests that extrinsic rewards can crowd out intrinsic motivation when experienced as controlling or as signaling distrust, but crowd it in when experienced as supportive (Bénabou & Tirole, Reference Bénabou and Tirole2003; Deci et al., Reference Deci, Koestner and Ryan1999; Frey & Jegen, Reference Frey and Jegen2001). For volunteers, whose engagement is tied to identity and a prosocial self-image, the meaning that material and monetary elements acquire can matter as much for sustained participation as the elements themselves (Bénabou & Tirole, Reference Bénabou and Tirole2006).
At the organizational level, recruitment and retention depend strongly on how organizations structure volunteer management. Formalized practices, systematic recruitment and screening, matching volunteers to suitable roles, clear role descriptions, training, and supportive recognition are linked to higher recruitment and retention (e.g., Farmer & Fedor, Reference Farmer and Fedor2001; Hidalgo & Moreno, Reference Hidalgo and Moreno2009; Newton et al., Reference Newton, Becker and Bell2014). Job design matters too, as volunteers are more satisfied and less likely to quit when tasks are meaningful and offer autonomy and flexibility (Alfes et al., Reference Alfes, Shantz and Saksida2015; Millette & Gagné, Reference Millette and Gagné2008; Van Schie et al., Reference Van Schie, Güntert, Oostlander and Wehner2015), and when recognition and small rewards reinforce their intention to stay (Garner & Garner, Reference Garner and Garner2011). Leadership is a key mechanism through which professionalized volunteer management is enacted, with people-centered styles such as transformational and servant leadership linked to higher satisfaction and commitment (e.g., Dwyer et al., Reference Dwyer, Bono, Snyder, Nov and Berson2013). The move from unpaid to paid coordinators is expected to amplify these effects, as paid staff have more time, continuity, and authority to implement HRM practices (Hwang & Powell, Reference Hwang and Powell2009; Maier et al., Reference Maier, Meyer and Steinbereithner2016). At the same time, critical accounts caution that expanding a professional managerial layer can shift organizational logics toward more instrumental, bureaucratic control, potentially weakening members’ willingness to assume unpaid leadership roles (Hwang & Powell, Reference Hwang and Powell2009; Maier et al., Reference Maier, Meyer and Steinbereithner2016; Sanders, Reference Sanders2015).
Summary of literature and theoretical model
The literature reviewed above suggests that introducing a paid executive director, that is, moving the executive role from a voluntary to a paid position rather than raising executive pay or replacing volunteers with paid staff, can affect volunteer capacity through two competing mechanisms. Under a capacity-building logic, a paid executive adds administrative time, continuity, and formal authority to implement volunteer-management practices such as recruitment, role design, and recognition (Hwang & Powell, Reference Hwang and Powell2009; Maier et al., Reference Maier, Meyer and Steinbereithner2016). Because these operate at the level of everyday operations rather than governance, a paid executive is expected to reduce recruitment problems and enlarge the volunteer workforce, with gains concentrated among operational rather than board volunteers. Under a countervailing motivation-crowding and managerialism logic, the same change may signal that operations are now handled by professionals and shift the club toward instrumental control, potentially undermining members’ willingness to volunteer (Bénabou & Tirole, Reference Bénabou and Tirole2003; Frey & Jegen, Reference Frey and Jegen2001; Sanders, Reference Sanders2015). Because the two mechanisms push in opposite directions, the net effect is ambiguous and remains an empirical question whose direction we expect to depend on club size, complexity, and financial strain. Figure 1 summarizes the model.
Theoretical model of linking paid executive leadership to volunteer capacity.
Methods
Research context and data collection
Sport clubs are the backbone of organized sport in Germany and one of its most stable voluntary infrastructures. With almost 86,000 clubs affiliated to the German Olympic Sports Confederation (DOSB), they offer broad opportunities for physical activity, social participation, and community engagement. Typically established as registered voluntary associations governed by democratically elected boards, they rely heavily on voluntary labor, including coaches and administrators, and maintain a strong member orientation rooted in civic traditions. Many clubs supplement this traditional arrangement by introducing employed managerial staff, chief among them the executive director, who assumes operational responsibility for day-to-day administration. While the board retains formal authority and strategic oversight, the executive director coordinates core functions such as member services, finances, sport programs, communication with federations, and fundraising, marking a key interface between volunteer governance and managerial professionalization.
The clubs studied here are grassroots, community-based organizations rather than professional sport enterprises, typically organized as registered voluntary associations affiliated with sport-specific federations and state sports confederations under the DOSB.
Empirically, the study draws on the Sport Development Report (SDR), a national longitudinal survey of German sport clubs covering organizational characteristics, finances, facilities, and voluntary engagement. Because the transition from an unpaid to a paid executive director was measured only from wave 5 onwards, the analyses use waves 5–9 (wave 5: 2013; wave 6: 2015; wave 7: 2017; wave 8: 2020; wave 9: 2023). In total, the unbalanced panel comprises 15,246 club-year observations.
Measures and variables
The analysis relies on two club-level outcomes. First, perceived difficulties in recruiting volunteers are measured by an item asking representatives to rate “problems in recruiting volunteers” on a five-point scale from 1 (“no problem”) to 5 (“very serious problem”). Second, the reported number of active volunteers, all individuals working for the club on an unpaid basis, serves as an objective indicator of volunteer resources. Together, these two measures capture both the subjective difficulty clubs experience in recruiting volunteers and the actual size of their volunteer workforce.
The key explanatory variable indicates leadership professionalization through the employment of a paid executive director. The variable Paid ED takes the value 1 if the executive director position is paid in a given wave and 0 if unpaid, allowing within-club changes from unpaid to paid leadership to be identified over the panel.
To isolate the association between paid executive leadership and volunteer outcomes, we control for a set of time-varying organizational characteristics that prior research has shown to shape both whether clubs professionalize and their capacity to recruit and retain volunteers. Club size is captured by the total number of members (Members_Total), as larger clubs face greater coordination demands and are more likely to employ paid staff (Horch & Schütte, Reference Horch and Schütte2009; Wicker & Breuer, Reference Wicker and Breuer2013). A dummy variable for multisport clubs (Multisport) distinguishes structurally more complex organizations that offer more than one sport from single-sport clubs (Lang et al., Reference Lang, Piller, Schmid, Lamprecht and Nagel2022). Financial strain is measured by a five-point item assessing whether the club currently faces financial problems (Prob_Financial), with higher values indicating more severe difficulties, as financial and volunteer problems are closely intertwined in nonprofit sport clubs (Wicker & Breuer, Reference Wicker and Breuer2013). A dummy captures whether the club has squad or elite athletes (Squad_Athlete), while the total number of different sports offered (Num_Sports), markers of organizational complexity and professionalization (Dowling et al., Reference Dowling, Edwards and Washington2014; Lang et al., Reference Lang, Piller, Schmid, Lamprecht and Nagel2022).
Further controls describe the club’s program profile, infrastructure, and local context. A dummy variable indicates whether the club offers health-oriented sport programs (Health_offers), a resource-relevant dimension of clubs’ service portfolio (Wicker & Breuer, Reference Wicker and Breuer2013). Facility-related variables distinguish between clubs that operate their own sport facility (Own_Facility) and those that use public facilities (Public_Facility), as infrastructure resources shape clubs’ financial and administrative burden (Wicker & Breuer, Reference Wicker and Breuer2013). Finally, municipal population size (Community_Population) captures differences in the local opportunity structure and competition for volunteers across communities (Rossi et al., Reference Rossi, Breuer and Feiler2020). All variables are measured at the club–wave level and summarized in Table 1.
Descriptive statistics (n = 12,576)
Table 1. Long description
The table contains five columns: Variable, Mean, Std. Dev., Min, and Max. The data is organized into three thematic sections.
Outcome variables:
* Prob. VolRecruit: Mean 3.51, Std. Dev. 1.18, Min 1, Max 5.
* Vol. Total: Mean 27.7, Std. Dev. 40.6, Min 1, Max 1637.
Treatment:
* Paid E D: Mean 0.03, Std. Dev. 0.18, Min 0, Max 1.
Control variables:
* Members Total: Mean 415.89, Std. Dev. 1227.67, Min 1, Max 87105.
* Multisport: Mean 0.55, Std. Dev. 0.5, Min 0, Max 1.
* Club Age: Mean 67.45, Std. Dev. 48.45, Min 0, Max 822.
* Prob Financial: Mean 2.00, Std. Dev. 1.11, Min 1, Max 5.
* Squad Athlete: Mean 0.15, Std. Dev. 0.36, Min 0, Max 1.
* Num Sports: Mean 4.08, Std. Dev. 4.59, Min 1, Max 40.
* Health offers: Mean 0.39, Std. Dev. 0.49, Min 0, Max 1.
* Own Facility: Mean 0.43, Std. Dev. 0.5, Min 0, Max 1.
* Public Facility: Mean 0.69, Std. Dev. 0.46, Min 0, Max 1.
* Com. Population: Mean 184835.90, Std. Dev. 566093.00, Min 0, Max 3677472.
Empirical strategy
The effect of introducing a paid executive director on volunteer outcomes is estimated with a two-way fixed-effects (TWFE) panel model, following the same clubs across five waves of the Sport Development Report (2–3 years apart). Either perceived problems recruiting volunteers or the total number of volunteers is regressed on an indicator for paid executive leadership, a vector of time-varying club characteristics, club fixed effects, and wave fixed effects, with standard errors clustered at the club level.
The treatment variable exploits within-club changes in the executive director’s payment status. For each club, the first wave in which the position is reported as paid defines the treatment onset; the indicator takes the value 1 in that wave and up to four subsequent waves (about 8 years after the change), reflecting the maximum follow-up observable in the SDR panel given the restriction to waves 5–9, and 0 in all pre-treatment waves. Clubs that revert from a paid to an unpaid executive director are dropped from the first backswitch onwards, so that the treatment captures a durable move toward paid executive leadership rather than temporary fluctuations. Club fixed effects are crucial because they remove all time-invariant differences between clubs that could be correlated with both the decision to employ a paid executive director and volunteer outcomes, such as governance traditions, regional culture, or mission. Wave fixed effects absorb macro-level changes such as sport policy reforms or broader shifts in volunteering. The TWFE estimates thus capture the average medium-run change in recruitment difficulties and volunteer numbers associated with a shift from unpaid to paid executive leadership, holding constant club-specific heterogeneity and common period shocks. Because waves are spaced 2–3 years apart, they reflect sustained differences over several years rather than short-term adjustments.
To address the concern that switching clubs may differ systematically from non-switching clubs, each switching club was matched at its last pre-switch wave to never-switching clubs surveyed in the same wave, using radius matching (caliper = 0.01) on the full set of controls. All main models are then re-estimated on the matched sample using the matching weights.
Results
Descriptive results
Table 1 reports descriptive statistics for all study variables (N = 12,576 club-wave observations). On average, clubs reported rather pronounced difficulties in recruiting volunteers: the mean of the index measuring problems in recruiting volunteers is 3.51 (SD = 1.18) on a five-point scale (1 = no problem, 5 = very serious problem). Clubs had, on average, 27.7 volunteers (SD = 40.6), but the range is wide, from 1 to 1,637 volunteers, indicating considerable heterogeneity in the availability of volunteer labor. Only a small minority of observations involve a club with a paid executive director. The mean of the treatment indicator Paid ED is 0.03 (SD = 0.18), implying that around 3% of club-wave observations fall in the post-switch period of a club that moved to a paid executive director. Overall, around 9.7% of all club-wave observations indicated a paid executive in charge.
Analytical results
Introducing a paid executive director is consistently associated with fewer recruitment problems and a larger volunteer base (Table 2). In the TWFE models without additional controls, the coefficient for Paid ED in model 1 shows that when a club switches from an unpaid to a paid executive director, reported problems recruiting volunteers decrease by about 0.38 points on the five-point scale (p < 0.01). Given a sample mean of 3.5, this is roughly a 10–11% reduction in recruitment difficulties. Adding the full set of time-varying controls in model 2 leaves the effect very similar (−0.30, p < 0.05), so it is not driven by concurrent changes in club size, age, program profile, or facilities, while financial strain is independently associated with more recruitment problems. Models 3 and 4 use the number of volunteers: without controls, switching to a paid ED adds about nine volunteers (model 3, p < 0.05), and with controls about 10 (model 4, p < 0.1), roughly a one-third increase on the sample average of about 28. In contrast to the recruitment-problem models, the coefficient on Prob_Financial in column (4) is small and not statistically different from zero, suggesting that financial strain is primarily linked to perceived recruitment challenges rather than to the current stock of volunteers.
Paid ED influence on volunteering
Table 2. Long description
A statistical table with four columns of results. Columns 1 and 2 measure the probability of volunteer recruitment (Prob. Vol Recruit), and columns 3 and 4 measure total volunteering (Vol. Total).
Key findings for the primary variable, Paid E D:
- Column 1: -0.377 (significant at p < 0.01).
- Column 2: -0.298 (significant at p < 0.05).
- Column 3: 8.902 (significant at p < 0.05).
- Column 4: 10.170 (significant at p < 0.1).
Other variables included in models 2 and 4:
- Members Total: -0.000 in model 2 and 0.003 in model 4.
- Multisport: -0.055 in model 2 and -1.394 in model 4.
- Club Age: 0.001 in model 2 and -0.026 in model 4.
- Squad Athlete: -0.109 (significant at p < 0.1) in model 2 and -0.221 in model 4.
- Num Sports: -0.003 in model 2 and 2.315 (significant at p < 0.01) in model 4.
- Health offers: 0.013 in model 2 and -2.064 in model 4.
- Own Facility: 0.012 in model 2 and -3.318 (significant at p < 0.05) in model 4.
- Public Facility: 0.013 in model 2 and 1.933 in model 4.
- Community Population: 0.000 in model 2 and -0.000 in model 4.
- Prob Financial: 0.128 (significant at p < 0.01) in model 2 and 0.101 in model 4.
Model Statistics:
- Constant values range from 3.126 to 25.237, all significant.
- All models include Club fixed effects and Wave fixed effects.
- Observations: 15,246 (Model 1), 12,771 (Model 2), 15,008 (Model 3), and 12,576 (Model 4).
- R-squared values: 0.005 (Model 1), 0.015 (Model 2), 0.019 (Model 3), and 0.301 (Model 4).
Note. Displayed are the coefficients; clustered standard errors at the club level in parentheses; ***p < 0.01, **p < 0.05, *p < 0.1.
The results are also robust to restricting the comparison group to structurally comparable clubs. All 289 switching clubs with complete pre-switch covariates are matched to never-switching clubs, and re-estimating on the matched sample yields estimates in line with the main results: a significantly lower perceived difficulty of recruiting volunteers (b = −0.286, p < 0.05) and a higher total number of volunteers (b = 8.418, p < 0.10) after the transition (see Supplementary Material).
Heterogeneity of effects
To explore heterogeneity, the model was re-estimated for four outcomes: the number of male, female, board-level, and operational-level volunteers (Table 3). For gender, the coefficient on Paid ED is positive and significant for both male and female. The estimate for Paid ED is 7.98 for male volunteers (Model 5, p < 0.1) and 3.96 for female volunteers (Model 6, p < 0.1), so both are higher after a club employs a paid executive director, somewhat more for men. For board-level volunteers, the coefficient on Paid ED is positive but not significant (Model 7), whereas for operational-level volunteers it is 8.18 (Model 8, p < 0.1), a significant increase in operational volunteering.
Heterogeneity of paid ED influence on volunteering (Vol. Total)
Table 3. Long description
A table with four data columns labeled (5) Male Vol. (6) Female Vol. (7) Board Vol. and (8) Operational Vol. The rows list independent variables with coefficients and standard errors in parentheses.
* Paid E D: 7.976 star (4.088) for Male; 3.955 star (2.311) for Female; 1.988 (2.249) for Board; 8.182 star (4.192) for Operational.
* Members_Total: 0.001 (0.001) for Male; 0.002 (0.001) for Female; minus 0.000 (0.000) for Board; 0.003 (0.002) for Operational.
* Multisport: minus 0.734 (0.784) for Male; minus 0.703 star (0.424) for Female; 0.187 (0.549) for Board; minus 1.582 star (0.812) for Operational.
* Club_Age: minus 0.024 (0.032) for Male; minus 0.003 (0.009) for Female; minus 0.001 (0.019) for Board; minus 0.025 (0.029) for Operational.
* Squad_Athlete: minus 0.261 (1.046) for Male; 0.030 (0.716) for Female; 0.209 (0.492) for Board; minus 0.430 (1.408) for Operational.
* Num_Sports: 1.640 triple star (0.390) for Male; 0.703 triple star (0.230) for Female; 0.627 triple star (0.237) for Board; 1.688 triple star (0.454) for Operational.
* Health_offers: minus 1.082 (1.058) for Male; minus 1.056 star (0.575) for Female; minus 0.296 (0.718) for Board; minus 1.769 (1.091) for Operational.
* Own_Facility: minus 2.019 star (1.204) for Male; minus 1.334 double star (0.625) for Female; minus 1.608 (1.230) for Board; minus 1.710 (1.049) for Operational.
* Public_Facility: 1.373 (1.286) for Male; 0.571 (0.412) for Female; 0.824 (0.971) for Board; 1.108 (0.760) for Operational.
* Community_Population: minus 0.000 (0.000) across all columns.
* Prob_Financial: 0.133 (0.321) for Male; minus 0.054 (0.176) for Female; minus 0.073 (0.216) for Board; 0.174 (0.338) for Operational.
* Constant: 12.795 triple star (1.893) for Male; 6.458 triple star (1.166) for Female; 9.369 triple star (0.780) for Board; 9.979 triple star (2.530) for Operational.
All models include Club and Wave fixed effects. Observations are 12,576 for columns 5 through 7 and 14,151 for column 8. R-squared values range from 0.077 to 0.277.
Note. Displayed are the coefficients; clustered standard errors at the club level in parentheses; ***p < 0.01, **p < 0.05, *p < 0.1.
Moderators
A series of two-way fixed-effects models with interaction terms tested whether the effect varies across club types for both outcomes (Tables 4 and 5). A first pattern concerns club size and complexity. For recruitment problems, the interaction between Paid ED and the number of members is negative and significant (β = −0.000; p < 0.01), and the interaction with the multisport indicator is clearly negative and sizeable (β = −0.549; p < 0.05). This means that the reduction in recruitment difficulties associated with hiring a paid executive director is strongest in larger and multisport clubs, whereas it is small and often statistically insignificant in small, single-sport organizations. A similar pattern emerges for the number of volunteers, although the evidence is more mixed across moderators. The interaction with the number of sports offered is positive and statistically significant (β = 1.903; p < 0.01), while the interactions with members and multisport status are positive but not statistically significant. A second pattern concerns club age, for which there is little evidence of moderation. The interactions between Paid ED and club age are small and not statistically significant in either outcome. The effect of professionalizing the executive position does not systematically differ between younger and older organizations once other characteristics are held constant. Finally, financial problems emerge as a critical boundary condition. For recruitment difficulties, the main effect of Paid ED is negative, but the interaction with the financial-problems index is positive and significant. This implies that the beneficial impact of hiring a paid executive on recruitment problems is pronounced when clubs report little or no financial strain, but it becomes weaker and can vanish as financial problems intensify.
Moderation of paid ED influence on volunteering (Prob. VolRecruit)
Table 4. Long description
A statistical table with columns labeled 9 through 13.
Key interaction terms and coefficients:
* Paid E D times Members_Total (Model 9): -0.000 with significance p < 0.01.
* Paid E D times multisport (Model 10): -0.549 with significance p < 0.05.
* Paid E D times Club_Age (Model 11): -0.004.
* Paid E D times Num_Sports (Model 12): -0.017.
* Paid E D times Prob_Financial (Model 13): 0.178 with significance p < 0.01.
Main effects and controls:
* Paid E D: Coefficients range from 0.161 in Model 10 to -0.680 in Model 13 (p < 0.1).
* Squad_Athlete: Consistently negative around -0.109 (p < 0.1) across all models.
* Prob_Financial: Consistently positive around 0.127 (p < 0.01) across all models.
* Constant: Approximately 3.12 to 3.14 (p < 0.01) for all models.
Model Specifications:
* Club fixed effects and Wave fixed effects are ‘Yes’ for all models.
* Observations: 12,771 for all models.
* R-squared: Ranges from 0.015 to 0.016.
Standard errors are provided in parentheses below each coefficient. Significance levels are indicated by asterisks: three for p < 0.01, two for p < 0.05, and one for p < 0.1.
Note. Displayed are the coefficients; clustered standard errors at the club level in parentheses; ***p < 0.01, **p < 0.05, *p < 0.1.
Moderation of paid ED influence on volunteering (Vol. Total)
Table 5. Long description
A regression table with columns labeled 14 through 18.
Key variables and coefficients (standard errors in parentheses):
* Paid E D: Values range from minus 7.622 to 25.005. Significant negative effect in model 17 (minus 5.875*) and significant positive effect in model 18 (25.005*).
* Interaction terms:
- Paid E D times Members_Total: 0.010 (0.008) in model 14.
- Paid E D times Multisport: 21.524 (18.668) in model 15.
- Paid E D times Club_Age: 0.043 (0.102) in model 16.
- Paid E D times Num_Sports: 1.903*** (0.731) in model 17.
- Paid E D times Prob_Financial: minus 6.915 (4.441) in model 18.
* Control variables:
- Members_Total: Consistent at 0.002 to 0.003.
- Multisport: Negative coefficients, significant in model 15 (minus 1.723*).
- Num_Sports: Highly significant positive coefficients across all models, ranging from 2.144*** to 2.333***.
- Own_Facility: Significant negative coefficients across all models, ranging from minus 3.305* to minus 3.449**.
* Constant: Significant positive values around 19.0 across all models.
* Model Statistics:
- Club and Wave fixed effects: Yes for all.
- Observations: 12,576 for all.
- R-squared: Ranges from 0.298 to 0.307.
Note: * p < 0.1, ** p < 0.05, *** p < 0.01.
Note. Displayed are the coefficients; clustered standard errors at the club level in parentheses; ***p < 0.01, **p < 0.05, *p < 0.1.
Channels
To explore how a paid ED might affect volunteer outcomes, the analysis considers channels related to club philosophy and the club’s financial situation. Three items capture the club’s normative orientation on a 5-point Likert scale. Phil_Social captures whether the club “places great value on community and sociability.” Phil_VolTraining captures whether the club “places value on the further training and development of volunteers.” Phil_Digital captures whether the club “sees digitalization as an opportunity.” Prob_Financial measures the extent of financial problems. Phil_Social and Prob_Financial are available in waves 6–9, Phil_VolTraining in waves 7–9, and Phil_Digital only in waves 8–9, which explains the differing sample sizes across models.
Results are reported in Table 6. For the community-oriented philosophy Phil_Social (Model 19), the coefficient on Paid ED is small and statistically insignificant, indicating no clear change in the stated importance of community and sociability after the introduction of a paid executive director. A similar pattern appears for Phil_VolTraining (Model 20): the coefficient on Paid ED is not statistically different from zero. By contrast, the digitalization item Phil_Digital (Model 21) shows a positive and statistically significant association with Paid ED (β = 0.342, p < 0.1), suggesting a stronger emphasis on seeing digitalization as an opportunity in clubs that introduce a paid ED. When financial problems are used as the outcome (Prob_Financial, Model 22), the estimated coefficient on Paid ED is positive but not significant, indicating no systematic change in the reported severity of financial problems following the introduction of a paid executive director.
Channels of paid ED influence on volunteering
Table 6. Long description
The table presents regression coefficients for four models, numbered 19 through 22. The dependent variables are Phil Social for model 19, Phil VolTraining for model 20, Phil Digital for model 21, and Prob Financial for model 22.
Key independent variable results:
* Paid E D: 0.036 for model 19; minus 0.116 for model 20; 0.342 with one asterisk for model 21; 0.082 for model 22.
* Members Total: 0.000 with three asterisks for model 19; 0.000 for model 20; minus 0.000 for model 21; 0.000 for model 22.
* Multisport: 0.006 for model 19; 0.186 with one asterisk for model 20; minus 0.089 for model 21; 0.032 for model 22.
* Num Sports: 0.025 with three asterisks for model 19; 0.006 for model 20; 0.051 with two asterisks for model 21; minus 0.009 for model 22.
* Own Facility: 0.063 with one asterisk for model 19; minus 0.118 with two asterisks for model 20; minus 0.007 for model 21; minus 0.020 for model 22.
* Community Population: minus 0.000 with one asterisk for model 19; 0.000 for model 20; minus 0.000 with one asterisk for model 21; minus 0.000 with two asterisks for model 22.
* Constant: 3.963 with three asterisks for model 19; 4.007 with three asterisks for model 20; 3.313 with three asterisks for model 21; 2.111 with three asterisks for model 22.
Summary statistics:
* Club and Wave fixed effects are included for all models.
* Observations: 12,688 for model 19; 8,924 for model 20; 5,877 for model 21; 12,879 for model 22.
* R-squared: 0.0202 for model 19; 0.014 for model 20; 0.012 for model 21; 0.003 for model 22.
Standard errors are provided in parentheses below each coefficient. Significance levels are indicated by asterisks: three for p less than 0.01, two for p less than 0.05, and one for p less than 0.1.
Note. Displayed are the coefficients; clustered standard errors at the club level in parentheses; ***p < 0.01, **p < 0.05, *p < 0.1.
Discussion
This study examined the relationship between introducing a paid executive director and volunteer capacity in nonprofit sport clubs. Across two core outcomes, clubs that switch from unpaid to paid executive leadership subsequently report fewer problems recruiting volunteers and maintain a larger volunteer workforce over several years. These associations remain after accounting for observed time-varying characteristics, club fixed effects, and period effects, indicating that professionalizing the executive role is connected to a more favorable volunteer situation in the medium term. A paid executive can thus ease a key organizational bottleneck by enabling more professionalized volunteer management (e.g., Hager & Brudney, Reference Hager and Brudney2011; Studer & von Schnurbein, Reference Studer and Von Schnurbein2013). Taken together, the results align more closely with narratives that view professionalization as a means to build organizational capacity than with perspectives that emphasize the erosion of nonprofit distinctiveness. In German sport clubs, creating a paid ED position thus appears, on average and under certain conditions, to support rather than undermine the voluntary base.
Within the sport-club literature, prior work has documented both pressures to professionalize and the mixed consequences of different forms of professionalization (Dowling et al., Reference Dowling, Edwards and Washington2014; Horch & Schütte, Reference Horch and Schütte2009; Lang et al., Reference Lang, Piller, Schmid, Lamprecht and Nagel2022). By tracking clubs through the actual transition from unpaid to paid executive leadership, rather than treating professionalization as a static attribute, this study adds dynamic evidence to a field that has largely relied on cross-sectional comparisons.
The disaggregated results show that increases in volunteers after the introduction of a paid ED occur for both men and women and are concentrated at the operational level rather than at the board level. Paid executives appear to strengthen volunteering mainly by coordinating helpers, structuring tasks, and stabilizing day-to-day operations, while leaving the board governance layer largely intact (e.g., Hager & Brudney, Reference Hager and Brudney2011; Studer & von Schnurbein, Reference Studer and Von Schnurbein2013). This role profile resonates with nonprofit leadership and HRM studies emphasizing supportive climates, well-designed tasks, and clear structures for sustaining volunteer commitment (Millette & Gagné, Reference Millette and Gagné2008; Van Schie et al., Reference Van Schie, Güntert, Oostlander and Wehner2015). Paid executive leadership thus appears less as a substitute for voluntary leadership and more as an anchor around which a broader volunteer workforce is organized.
At the same time, the moderation results underline that professionalizing the executive position is not universally beneficial. The advantages are most pronounced in large, multisport, and programmatically diversified clubs, as well as in organizations without significant financial strain. In such settings, a professional ED can leverage systems, routines, and partnerships that scale across many volunteers, translating executive time into the volunteer-management practices known to foster satisfaction and retention (Hidalgo & Moreno, Reference Hidalgo and Moreno2009; Newton et al., Reference Newton, Becker and Bell2014). This pattern fits accounts of professionalization as a process whose returns depend on organizational size, complexity, and resources (Dowling et al., Reference Dowling, Edwards and Washington2014; Hwang & Powell, Reference Hwang and Powell2009). When resource and demand constraints bind, hiring a paid executive cannot compensate for structural disadvantages or fund the HRM and volunteer-support practices the retention literature identifies as crucial.
The exploratory channel analysis shows no systematic change in the stated emphasis on community and sociability or on developing volunteers after introducing a paid ED, while clubs become more likely to view digitalization as an opportunity. In Dart’s (Reference Dart2004) terms, the benefit thus operates less through a shift in declared values than through more “business-like” modes of service delivery and volunteer management: digital tools for member services, communication, and scheduling make it easier to match people to roles and coordinate contributions. This speaks to recent evidence on the civic fabric of German sport clubs. Given Mutz et al.’s (Reference Mutz, Braun, Blessing, Hilpisch and Burrmann2026) finding that a participatory, community-oriented culture underpins clubs’ broader civic value, the absence of any decline in the stated emphasis on community after introducing a paid ED is reassuring: executive professionalization appears to leave this normative core intact while reshaping mainly the instrumental, service-delivery dimension of club life.
The findings also speak to the countervailing perspective in the nonprofit literature that professionalization fosters managerialism and, over time, mission drift (Jones, Reference Jones2007; Maier et al., Reference Maier, Meyer and Steinbereithner2016). In our setting, the channel analysis offers little indication of such goal displacement: clubs do not de-emphasize community and sociability, or the training and development of volunteers, after introducing a paid ED. Two contextual features plausibly protect against drift: German sport clubs are financed mainly through membership fees rather than external funders, weakening the resource-dependence channel through which drift typically operates (Froelich, Reference Froelich1999), and governance remains anchored in elected volunteer boards that constrain executive discretion. The moderation results further delineate when professionalization supports rather than displaces mission and community orientation, namely in larger, diversified, and financially stable clubs.
The present results do not suggest an average crowding-out of volunteers in the wake of introducing a paid ED; if anything, volunteer numbers increase. Read through the lens of motivation crowding theory, this pattern is consistent with a supportive rather than a controlling mode of professionalization (Deci et al., Reference Deci, Koestner and Ryan1999; Frey & Jegen, Reference Frey and Jegen2001). Two features of the membership-based setting help explain why volunteers’ intrinsic motivation appears preserved rather than diminished. First, executive compensation is typically of low visibility to ordinary members, so paid leadership is unlikely to be experienced as external control or as a signal that unpaid engagement is no longer valued. Second, paid executive work tends to support rather than displace volunteer-led governance, primarily reducing coordination demands and transaction costs that volunteers experience as practical support rather than managerial encroachment. Professionalization thus operates on the crowding-in rather than the crowding-out side of the mechanism, explaining why paying the executive can enhance rather than undermine volunteer engagement in this context.
For practitioners and sport policymakers, the findings suggest that introducing a paid ED can be a promising way to strengthen volunteer capacity in sufficiently large, financially resilient clubs. Boards may reasonably view the ED as an instrument to support and expand voluntary engagement rather than as a threat to the voluntary ethos. At the same time, the weaker effects in small and financially strained clubs caution against a simple “professionalize everywhere” recommendation. For these clubs, part-time or pooled professional support at the association level may be more appropriate than a full-time executive position.
Limitations and future research
Several limitations point to directions for future research. First, the treatment is a binary indicator for whether the ED is paid, which does not distinguish levels or forms of compensation, working time, or contractual arrangements; because debates about executive pay often hinge on the magnitude and structure of remuneration, more granular measures could test whether high or performance-linked pay elicits different reactions than modest, role-appropriate compensation (Balsam & Harris, Reference Balsam and Harris2018; Frumkin & Keating, Reference Frumkin and Keating2010). Second, the volunteer outcomes are limited to perceived recruitment problems and the number of volunteers, and cannot capture volunteer hours, stability of engagement, the distribution of tasks across roles, or how volunteers experience leadership and HRM practices. These unobserved characteristics, such as the prevalence of long-serving or highly committed volunteers, may also correlate with a club’s propensity to move to a paid ED, although the club fixed effects and matching mitigate this concern insofar as such differences are stable over time or reflected in observable characteristics. Linking organizational data to individual-level surveys would let future studies capture the intensity and quality of volunteering, volunteers’ motives and satisfaction, and their perceptions of professional leadership.
Third, although the club fixed effects, time-varying controls, and matching address selection into paid executive leadership, selection on time-varying unobservables cannot be fully ruled out, for example when clubs on an already improving trajectory decide to professionalize. The estimates should therefore be read as robust associations rather than definitive causal effects. Fourth, the analysis is situated in German sport clubs, which operate in a particular institutional and cultural environment and a mixed field where associations and commercial providers coexist. Comparative studies across countries and nonprofit fields could test whether these patterns generalize to other membership-based organizations or depend on specific governance traditions, competitive conditions, and funding regimes.
Conclusion
In sum, this study provides dynamic, within-club evidence that introducing paid executive leadership is associated with a stronger rather than a weaker volunteer base in nonprofit sport clubs. Clubs that move from a voluntary to a paid executive subsequently report fewer recruitment problems and sustain a larger volunteer workforce, with gains concentrated at the operational level and most pronounced in large, diversified, and financially stable clubs. Rather than crowding out civic engagement, professionalization here appears to operate through supportive, service-delivery-oriented coordination that leaves the club’s normative core largely intact. For clubs facing mounting coordination demands, professionalizing the executive role and maintaining a functioning volunteer infrastructure thus appear to be compatible rather than conflicting goals.
Supplementary material
The supplementary material for this article can be found at http://doi.org/10.1017/S0957876526000781.
Funding statement
This work was supported by the Federal Institute of Sport Science (BISp) (grant number ZMVI4–081802/17–26).
Competing interests
The authors have no competing interests to declare that are relevant to the content of this article.
Open access
