winedrinkingman: When you volunteer you are always taking a job from someone who could be getting paid for it, and would be much more suitable for the job anyways.

The exemptions are when you are donating your services and they are specialist enough that they would cost money, and that the person who could be doing the work would not be missing it, like when a lawyer does pro bono work or a medical practitioner works for Doctors Without Borders, or nobody is going to be doing it anyways.

winedrinkingman: SafetyThird: winedrinkingman: When you volunteer you are always taking a job from someone who could be getting paid for it, and would be much more suitable for the job anyways.

The exemptions are when you are donating your services and they are specialist enough that they would cost money, and that the person who could be doing the work would not be missing it, like when a lawyer does pro bono work or a medical practitioner works for Doctors Without Borders, or nobody is going to be doing it anyways.

I'm going to disagree. What it sounds like you're saying is "unless you have unique skills don't bother trying to help. You're just taking away so opportunity from someone you're trying to help from helping themselves."

I get it from a phony social media feel good angle. I'll agree that's that's sad but overall if more money gets directed toward helping then it's a positive.

Let me phrase that differently.  Yes you could do the work for free, or you could donate money to a group that will pay someone to do the work.  Now let's consider how this plays out.  If you are going to a third world country to work, likely you come from a well off family, and you have means.  Is it better for you to volunteer scrubbing the floors of a hospital in a developing country, or is it better that you stay home, and take all your adventure money, and pay someone, in that developing country, who would otherwise be unemployed, to scrub the floors in that hospital instead?  

You scrub the floors, well you created a huge carbon foot print to get there, you are not going to scrub the floor any better than the local, but if the local does it, he now has a little more money to feed his family.  You do it, sure the floors get clean, but there is one more unemployed person in that developing community.

But of course you don't get cool stories to tell your friends about how you found yourself, and grew so spiritually when you donated that money instead of going on a fun trip, but you have helped someone out.

Now there are people who benefit developing countries, because of the expertise they bring with them, but chances are you are not that person.  

Even here in the states, this can be a problem.  My old church used to employ janitors, many of them with cognitive disabilities that impaired their ability to find a normal job.  Church paid them to clean the chapels, and tend to the garden.  Then someone realized they could fire the janitors and have the members volunteer to clean the chapels instead, so they stared doing that, telling the members the money saved would be used for other great works.  Some of it may even be used for other good works.  That doesn't do the severely autistic guy, or the woman with down-syndrome who used to clean my chapel much good.  They had a job that paid them money, didn't work them so many hours that they lost their disability, and that they could do.  But hey, the healthy church members who give up their Saturdays to scrub toilets for the Lord can feel like they are making the world a better place while their leaders are able to increase the building budget, and can now build fancier, prettier looking chapels, that look more fine and splendid.  I mean it's not what Jesus would have done, but it is what they are doing.