Volunteering - Service or Exploitation?

I'd like to make a point about volunteering.
  

I've done my share of volunteering in my life; however, I've always thought that volunteering was a double-edged sword.   

Volunteering ensures that our world keeps running in a somewhat humane manner, that the social supports are there to help those who can't help themselves.


In fact, volunteering and other unpaid work is an entire economy unto itself, without which much of this world would cease to function. 


And there are some economists  (Marilyn Waring for example, in her book "Counting for Nothing") who've made the point that our current national accounting systems seriously misrepresent what's really going on in our world by not counting volunteering and unpaid work, undertaken mostly by women and children. 


Volunteering lets society and its institutions off the hook in fulfilling essential functions/delivering essential services to its citizens, and is also exploitative of people.

I see many non-profits operating from a commercial business model, but paying their staff relatively low wages/salaries.   They claim lack of funds for this disparity in pay between the private and non-profit sector.   

And there's an underlying implication that people ought to be OK about being paid less because its for a 'worthy cause', they're giving of themselves and a degree of altruism is required to prove they're sincere in their motivation.

I think this contributes to the continuation of the imbalance we have in our world.

Firstly because it sends the message that someone else will come along and clean up the mess...

And secondly, those issues are not important anyway, because we use volunteers so much and don't pay staff enough to show we value the work.