

Stop waiting to give back - noahrsg
http://getluckybird.com/blog/mornings-at-martins/

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jmduke
A common excuse for not volunteering is "I can just donate money! My time's
worth more than the minimum wage work I'd be doing, after all."

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!)

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noahrsg
Completely agree. I had the "donate money mindset" but I realized it was a
weak excuse for my own laziness. Been helping out every Tuesday and it
honestly does feel great.

Thanks for your feedback on WP-SVBTLE. Any suggestions for a good alternative?

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brnstz
The best way to donate your time is if you can contribute specialized skills.

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.

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noahrsg
This is an excellent point and something I've been thinking a lot about
lately. To be honest the work I do at Martin's probably doesn't have the best
ROI in terms of potential impact. But it is something that I get happiness
from (never thought that washing dishes for two hours straight would be
"pleasure" but once a week it is a great break from staring at a screen).

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

