But this is so rarely true, especially when so many people are adopting the same mindset. The truth is, time you spend volunteering is generally not time you'd otherwise spend working, but time you'd otherwise spend on Reddit (or, you know, Hacker News) or something equally invaluable. Volunteering is also incredibly sensitive to word-of-mouth, in that if you get a few new volunteers and they come back, they usually bring their friends, colleagues, or at least some donations with them.
Besides, volunteering is like exercise to most people -- you invariably feel great after doing it.
(P.S. WP-SVBTLE looks bad. Not even talking about the philosophy behind stealing a design, the typography just looks sort of gross and this message might spread even further!)
Thanks for your feedback on WP-SVBTLE. Any suggestions for a good alternative?
Teaching kids to program? Really efficient.
Serving food? Not so efficient. Also consider there are a lot of unemployed people in this country who would be helped by a job created by your donation.
There are some less tangible factors here, and being involved in a community / serving as a role model can be valuable. But if you research, for example, international volunteering, they don't need people to do manual labor.
Something that I would be interested in joining/starting is going to talk to inercity youth about technology and entrepreneurism. Gonna go look into this
