Sometimes I volunteer to shop around for materials (flooring and appliances), as they don't have the time. 

Come December or the beginning of 2019 I would love the opportunity to volunteer some of my time to help anyone in search of an extra hand with flips or property management tasks.

If you're not interested in volunteering your time to make your community work in the way you want it to (as opposed to the way others want it to work), I get that.

My first thought was that I should approach property management companies to simply volunteer my time to do whatever tasks they may need done, and that via osmosis I will learn a lot.

All that said, don't volunteer to a pay a cent more than you have to ;)

Tell him you volunteered to take the pics instead of the insurance agent to minimize the inconvenience to the tenant.

It does not address the issue of PM holding last month's rent from owner, nor does it address advance rent payments volunteered by tenants.If tenants elect to pay in advance in full, the owner should get paid in full minus PM's management fees.

I am willing to volunteer to help with office work, Marketing,  etc to learn more about this business model. 

Generally, these will be lower income neighborhoods which already had problems.BUT, for those neighborhoods which had a strong support base and higher incomes, they could afford to have a volunteer Fire Dept, hire private security to drive the neighborhood, and keep the quality of their education for the kids up via private schools, which are generally expensive.When the down turn happens, richer families which sought to save money and chosed to live in the lower income neighborhoods, find themselves leaving the lower income neighborhoods and moving to the safer, higher income neighborhoods.

It's just an army of (mostly) volunteers trying to keep up with thousands of posts every day.