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I have gotten a number of good jobs, and gained a lot of quality experience, by volunteering at interesting places when otherwise unable to find a decent job. Volunteering isn't "working for free" it's an unpaid investment into your future. If you're a volunteer, people will train you to do stuff, give you practice on any number of skill sets, offer you coaching and advice-- all stuff that you would otherwise be paying hundreds of dollars to learn.
My whole life I have done this. I learned all my basic office skills by volunteering; I learned PR, services sales, events planning, event coordination, desktop publishing, basic clearance and copyright law, basic grantwriting, and fundamentals of internet sales-- all through volunteering different places when I was between jobs. Volunteering got me invaluable advice, great letters of recommendation, and valuable introductions to important people.
Because of the volunteering I've done, and what skills and experience it's gained me, I have been able to secure a higher salary with each and every new job I've gotten.
Especially in down market times, it's infinitely more likely to be helpful to volunteer than to just sit around the house mailing resumes to places you don't want to work at.
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Dull sublunary lovers love,
Whose soul is sense, cannot admit
Absence, because it doth remove
That thing which elemented it.
(From "A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning" by John Donne)
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