Discover the Power of TimeBanking
Harness Community Strength with TimeBanks
Explore how TimeBanks transform communities by valuing everyone's time equally and fostering meaningful connections.
What is a TimeBank?
A TimeBank is a community-based system where members exchange services using time as currency. For every hour you spend helping someone, you earn a time credit, which you can then use to receive help. This system ensures that all contributions are valued equally, promoting a sense of equality and cooperation among members.
One hour of service always earns one credit, regardless of the nature of that service. This is one of the greatest appeals of TimeBanks. Everyone's time is equal.
Why do communities adopt TimeBanks?
Resilience
Connect people, building community resilience.
In a world where many feel disconnected, TimeBanks offer a platform for people to connect, share skills, and support each other.
Equality
Valuing all people's time equally is an essential principle of TimeBank. It promotes respect, fairness, and understanding.
Acknowledges that everyone has the same number of hours in a day and that time is a limited resource. Recognizing the worth of each individual's time, we create a more equitable environment where collaboration and communication flourish.
Assistance
Make it easier for people to ask for and to give help.
Creating an environment where it's easy to ask for and offer help is essential. Open communication and a culture of kindness can break down barriers that prevent people from seeking support. By simplifying these processes, we foster a stronger community where everyone feels empowered to both give and receive assistance.
Five core values embedded within TimeBanking
The conceptual founder of TimeBanks, Edgar Cahn, identifies
Asset
Every one of us has something of value to share with someone else.
Redefining Work
There are some forms of work that money will not easily pay for, like building strong families, revitalizing neighborhoods, making democracy work, advancing social justice. Time credits were designed to reward, recognize and honor that work.
Reciprocity
Helping that works as a two-way street empowers everyone involved – the receiver as well as the giver. Paying it forward ensures that, together, we help each other build the world we all will live in.
Respect
We strive to respect where people are in the moment, not where we hope they will be at some future point.
Social Networks
Helping each other, we reweave communities of support, strength & trust.
TimeBank building community resilience with the gift of time
Tax Exemption Guidelines
Tax Exemption for TimeBanks
TimeBanking is tax-exempt, however a current IRD requirement for retaining the exempt status is for TimeBank members to offer only services other than those that are part of their money-paid work.
For this and other reasons, TimeBanking works at its best within a wider reciprocal credit economy. For example, time credit is generally not sufficient payment for a coordinator.
Additional Resources
- Project Lyttleton's report to the Ministry of Civil Defence on their TimeBank's response to the 2010 and 2011 Christchurch earthquakes,
- An article in The Guardian newspaper
- Worldwide TimeBank concept founder Dr Edgar Cahn's 2015 keynote address to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the Lyttleton Harbour TimeBank,
- Dr Edgar Cahn's interview on RadioNZ
- Emma McGuirk's dormant but excellent research blog on TimeBanks, or an excerpt
Further reading (Available at our shop)
- No More Throw-Away People, by Edgar Cahn, the founder of TimeBanking. A clear, warm case that everyone has something worth contributing, and that real wealth lives in the community we build together. Available at our shop.