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Comment by zozbot234 | Hacker News Reader

Well, if you're working in paid employment it will usually be a lot more effective to put in some more time at work, and give away some of the resulting income. "Donating your time" can of course be genuinely worthwhile if you're, e.g. a scientist who might want to do useful research on globally-relevant, critical issues; just not very much otherwise.

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I think some of the chronic ills of our society are rooted in the (incorrect) belief that solving any given problem is simply a matter of throwing $X at the problem.

"Donating time" is a deceptive phrase because it just sounds like you are paying out some currency other than money and that's it. "Donating time" encapsulates "building friendships, lifting up others, increasing love/unity in communities, gaining new perspectives" and more, unlike "donating money" which encapsulates none of them.

it will usually be a lot more effective to put in some more time at work, and give away some of the resulting income.

I'm paid salary. I'm of the opinion that it is usually the self-absorbed that think that after they leave the office they are still worth what their employer pays them.

Making it a requirement that your time donation be within your professional skillset is saying, "such work is beneath me". I'm not above ladling a bit of soup into a bowl or picking up the dog shit while at the animal shelter.

> I'm not above ladling a bit of soup into a bowl or picking up the dog shit while at the animal shelter.

I'm not opposed to that if you're doing it for your own benefit. But you should be thinking of this as leisure time for yourself, rather than assuming that you're "donating time" for the sake of real social impact. There's picking up dog $#!+, and then there's actually impactful stuff.

Then you don't understand the specialization of labor very well, and you're being very disingenuous to the parent post. They made no reference to certain work being beneath them, only the idea in maximizing resources. Maybe you could help the shelter with some database work while a junior high kid picks up poop.

There is far more dog shit to be picked up than database work to be done. I sometimes get the impression that folks think non-profits have an endless stream of IT projects, if only someone would volunteer time to do them. That has not been my experience, most volunteer organizations need physical work, not another web app. Most of the software needs can be taken care of by off-the-shelf products that will be supported longer than one-off volunteer projects that get abandoned.

Lots of us have highly specialized technical skills. It's nearly impossible, logistically and financially, for a small non-profit to hire a software developer or a web developer or an IT tech for two or three hours. Donating your time and talents can be very valuable for small organizations.

Now there is no way of obviously measuring this, but I'd make the case that donating time (volunteering on the ground) to organizations is way better than donating money. First, money goes through so many layers that it's hard to actually know what they go to, and how much actually ends up being useful and not just scavenged by middlemen. Secondly, donating your time by volunteering gives you more than just the feeling of feeling good. You also gain so much more perspective on life that will make you a better person, you'll appreciate what you have more and you can make sure what you actually spend time on is worthwhile.

So, please donate time by volunteering! But if you can't, money is also good of course.

The thing is, you can only donate time to organizations who are local to you, and there's a limit as to what causes these organizations can work on - highly-impactful local causes are quite few and far between. So if you're going to volunteer for some charitable purpose, be sure to choose something that has a decent chance of being genuinely worthwhile. (Advocating for criminal justice reform might be a good example.)

This is nice, but money very likely goes further than time. The work done by volunteers in organizations is typically not that high impact and usually grunt work. If you work in a high paying industry such as tech, working money and donating it will absolutely have a larger impact than volunteering. I agree volunteering can have a greater personal benefit, but from a utilitarian standpoint donating is better. Peter Singer makes this argument very well in his book the most good you can do.

I disagree. I wouldn't spend too much time thinking about what other people have done. Just what I can do. Just working in a food bank or picking up roadside trash on a weekend. It doesn't take much.

I think their point is similar to the one from this article: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/3p3CYauiX8oLjmwRF/purchase-f...

Basically if you make a high tier engineer's salary, you could do more utilitarian good by hiring several people to work at a food bank on the weekends. Roadside trash pickup is an example of a problem in need of a systemic solution, so if you can reduce litter in the first place, or build a machine that cleans everything, you might be doing more good that way, even though it doesn't look or feel as "noble".

But others have pointed out that it is useful to donate your time if you are giving your skills, and not just effort.

I would say the best place where everyone could donate time effectively would be a mentorship program like the Boys and Girls club. Having a positive role model, even just hanging around doing "boring" stuff, makes a huge difference at a young age [0]. One day I'll psyche myself up to actually being a mentor.

[0] https://youth.gov/youth-topics/mentoring/benefits-mentoring-...

Yes, you are right. Because there is always someone else who is paid less than you who will run around and do the actual work whilst you take all the credit. Genius.

It's far more important to be there and take the credit in person, doing the job of someone who could be doing a better job than you for $15/hr, while not just doing the job you get paid $50/hr to do and sending the money.

Everybody knows the most important parts of charity are who gets the credit and one's own personal growth.

I am always amazed by the poor comprehension ability of people on HackerNews.

I am saying that credit isn't the point. Also, I am not entirely clear on why you would require $15/hour to volunteer at a charity...but...good for you turning charity into a second source of income.

Btw, my point (I will spell it out) is that the problem is almost never money. Money is required to the extent that is required to pay other people...but, particularly for almost all local problems, the issue is not money but time. There is no reality in which people donate enough income to solve these problems but they could donate time, and that would be effective.

I respectfully disagree. Trying to accomplish something with lasting impact with volunteer labor is really hard. Sure you can clean up litter and staff a soup kitchen on the weekends but to make a meaningful, lasting difference requires organizational structure and sustained effort by dedicated people. In other words, you can have volunteers ladle out soup, but running the actual soup kitchen as an institution requires a professional staff. That requires money to pay those people's salaries.

By all mean, volunteer at your local soup kitchen. It is a great thing to do! But the money is more helpful on an ongoing basis.

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