For obvious reasons, average westerners have a comparative advantage in money-making relative to the average human. Thus, westerners (usually) shouldn’t directly volunteer their time to altruistic organizations which work in e.g. the third world; They should perform the two-step resource conversion of My Time → Money → Someone Else’s Time.
Some people in the third world are scammers. If you send your money without spending your time to get familiar with the situation, there is a risk you send to one of those. The more people send money without making research, the more profitable scamming becomes.
Now that effective altruism is a thing, this is solved by outsourcing your research to GiveWell. But before that, volunteering your time was one way to find out. And the optimal strategy would be to volunteer shortly, then switch to making money and donating. Which is kinda what people did, because volunteering is one of those things people usually do during university, when they don’t make lot of money anyway.
Some people in the third world are scammers. If you send your money without spending your time to get familiar with the situation, there is a risk you send to one of those. The more people send money without making research, the more profitable scamming becomes.
Now that effective altruism is a thing, this is solved by outsourcing your research to GiveWell. But before that, volunteering your time was one way to find out. And the optimal strategy would be to volunteer shortly, then switch to making money and donating. Which is kinda what people did, because volunteering is one of those things people usually do during university, when they don’t make lot of money anyway.