This is a CTP of initiative: Fair Shares (UK)
The CTP is concerned with the definition, classification and legal status of timebanking in the UK. These issues were resolved in 2000. While this directly relates to the legal status of timebanking for fiscal and welfare benefit purposes and the charitable status of timebanking organisations, the “big breakthrough” in the perspective of Martin Simon was that, through the process of clarifying its legal status, timebanking was declared neither to be paid work nor to be volunteering. Rather, a distinctive new category of activity was used for time exchange systems, ‘unpaid work’. This reflects that timebanking represents a new form of organizing activity and new way of doing/acting that is neither work nor volunteering. It operates on a distinctive set of values and principles and organizes experiments in building and re-building communities through interpersonal relationships that are based on equality and reciprocity, not charity or payment.
“It was Paul Boateng, who was in the labour government of Tony Blair, who declared time exchange to be ‘unpaid work’ and not ‘volunteering’, which meant we could work freely with people on benefits without rules and restrictions… we’ve hung on to that status… it’s unique to be regarded as such. This has given us lots of freedom.”
“More important (than the benefit disregard) was that they didn’t define us as volunteering. They put us in a separate bracket called ‘unpaid work’. That was a big breakthrough“.
It also distinguished time exchange from LETS.
“I used to love the LETS schemes in years gone by. I loved their freedom. But the problem with them and the market is they have a pricing system where, often, white, middle-class, male activities have higher values. So that’s really why we moved into timebanking. And I think with Fair Shares what we've created is a village. I walk around Stroud or Gloucester and other places and people recognize each other just as neighbours, just as ordinary people. And it’s their ability to live and let live. And they speak out. There’s still the active citizenship element of speaking out against injustice and all that. It is much more than [LETS or] volunteering…"
This highlights the importance for Fair Shares of the values of equality and reciprocity as values for building interpersonal relations. These are critical for the Asset-Based Community Development approach pursued by Fair Shares. Volunteering would be an inappropriate designation for Fair Shares, since volunteering is an act of charity and provides neither for equality nor for reciprocity, as there is always a ‘giver’ and a ‘receiver’ in volunteering.
“It’s almost like you have to establish a clear view of what you’re not, of what you don't do as much as what you do... We've managed to establish a clear view of ourselves as neither LETS nor volunteering. “
The US experience was very influential in clarifying the need (and offering the precedent) for securing pronouncement on the legal status of timebanking. The link with David Boyle of the New Economics Foundation (NEF) was important for securing a government statement about the legal status of timebanking and for the content of that statement.
Martin Simon first came across timebanking at a LETS workshop in the UK, where US experience with Time Dollars was the subject of a presentation. He decided to attend the first international conference about Time Dollars, at Blackrock near Boston. Six months earlier, David Boyle had been over in the US in the course of undertaking research for his book on alternative currencies, ‘Funny Money’. Martin Simon therefore contacted David Boyle (of the New Economics Foundation) to ask about people he should see while in the US. David Boyle was able to make introductions for his visit. When Martin returned he set up Fair Shares and, shortly after, helped David Boyle and the NEF set up Rushey Green, one of the first London Time banks. David Boyle and Martin Simon developed a working partnership. Together they wrote the funding proposal to establish TBUK.
“It was a really good partnership, it worked really well.”
“David is a writer. He writes books and that is his main focus. But he was also a speech writer for the liberal democrats, so he got us lots of introductions to people whenever they were necessary.”
“Dealing with that side of it [legal status] we [Fair Shares] worked very much with the New Economics Foundation.“ “There were massive positives in that for us because they could open doors to politicians. They could give us credibility.”
“A lot of our initial credibility was in our association with NEF; then, David came on the board of TBUK... he was there right the way through and was incredibly influential.”
Both Martin Simon and David Boyle were aware that in the US the legal and fiscal status of Time Credits had been clarified and agreement reached with the Inland Revenue Service (IRS) that time credits should be considered to have no fiscal implications. In the USA the distinction with paid work was based around the non-contractual nature of time exchange transactions. As no money is involved in time banking and as there is no contract or any immediate reward for services delivered, the US fiscal authorities found that there is no surety with time exchange that anything will ultimately be received in return for delivering services and, on this basis, no value (in monetary terms) can be attached concerning any return service that, ultimately, might be received. Accordingly, time exchange was considered by the US fiscal authorities to be outside the scope of taxation.
Drawing on US experience, but realizing that there were also differences between the US and UK contexts (especially in access to welfare benefits and services) Martin Simon and David Boyle saw the need for some similar kind of accommodation to be reached with the regulatory authorities over how to regard time banking activities.
David Boyle arranged with a back-bench MP, Edward Davey, to raise a question in Parliament about these matters. The Inland Revenue committed to look at the tax issue and, on the basis of explanations provided by timebanking experts (including David Boyle) timebanking was declared to be not taxable’. Similarly David Boyle was on an advisory board for an organisation involved in promoting a government-funded initiative to stimulate voluntarism and community action. The Board felt it was important to provide a mechanism whereby volunteers whose offers were not immediately taken up would not be disillusioned. This created interest in the concept and mechanism of timebanking. Government also wanted to avoid a situation where people receiving benefits were prevented from taking part in the campaign. This made possible a ruling that those receiving welfare and unemployment benefits could be involved in time exchange and time banking schemes without reduction or loss of entitlement to benefits. This depended on a separate and distinct category of activity being established for time exchange. Time exchange was considered to be neither ‘paid work’ nor ‘volunteering’. A new activity class was defined: ‘unpaid work’. This provided an alternative categorization and legitimated an alternative way of organizing interpersonal relations through timebanking as unpaid work.
Important related events included that the Blair Government was actively developing its ‘Third Way’ agenda for re-orienting policies generally. As part of this, the government wanted to promote community involvement. An Active Families Community Unit was established at the Home Office. By creating “a flurry of activity and information around timebanking at the time”, it was possible to bring timebanking to national government attention. According to David Boyle, the government and its agencies “then came knocking on our door to try to find out more. From that point on, I suppose, the opportunities began to emerge.”
As for the disregards, David Boyle has said: “The then government had just put £2 million+ into their volunteering campaign. The history here was that I sat on the advisory board of an organization called One Twenty, which had the support of the BBC. It was a sort of comic relief for volunteering…. At a very late stage – about two weeks before filming – they got hold of some research which said that most often if you volunteer and if your offer is not taken up within 48 hours you will never volunteer again for the whole of the rest of your life. This scared them a lot and what they found they needed was some sort of mechanism to say you are banking your time for later... [so they ended up asking me if they could use the name, time bank]. In the end, of course, the Home Office began to think: ‘Well, we can't have a situation whereby people on benefits are prevented from taking part in our big televised campaign either’, so that gave us the benefits disregard."
One implication of not being classed as ‘volunteering’ was that organizations representing and practicing timebanking had a harder time establishing charitable status. Volunteering implies that there is a ‘giver’ and a ‘receiver’; ‘giving’ represents an act of charity, which provides for ‘volunteering’ organizations to obtain charitable status. With timebanking the social relationship is one of reciprocity. The intent in timebanking is one of ‘give and take’. Reciprocity is an important principle, since it establishes equality between the parties involved in exchanges. This makes it more likely, also, that those in need of help at some time are willing to accept help, as they can exchange time credits for the help they need without feeling that this is an act of charity toward them. The help they receive is theirs of right in timebanking, which they have earned through previous acts of giving service.
However, this led to some difficulties with the Charities Commission over the charitable status of timebanking. Being granted charitable status is important for enabling civil society organizations to receive foundation funding and grants without these being regarded as taxable.
Martin Simon points out that:
“Originally it wasn’t recognized that reciprocity can be a charitable act. It has to be altruistic, you can’t gain anything back. But we managed to get the argument over that the community benefit exceeds the personal gain in any transaction in the TimeBank. To get that charitable status is quite important for fundraising.”
“One of the big things we have to fight [continuously] is it’s not volunteering. It’s very much more about being a good neighbor. We’ve had to keep our identity. There’s been a political drive to push us into volunteering.”
“On the negative side they [NEF] have always wanted to create theoretical models and evaluation processes.”
“The drawback [of government support and funding] is the sort of ‘professionalization’ of it…"
“We get the same pull [repeatedly, in one way or another] to professionalize timebanking. I’m one of those people hanging out against that. If what we are doing isn't driven by the members, then it's not sustainable.”
“What you are actually talking about is what comes with money…. it’s the way that funding is always organized, you get your three years and then you have to re-invent yourself and recreate a whole new identity package to get another three years.”
“The system organizes itself in silos, so you have to have time banks for health, disabilities, etc. We fight that and I have never ever been involved in an application that said we would in any way be anything but inclusive. You might have to meet targets of numbers of people, whichever need is being defined by that particular silo that you're engaged with to get the money, but you have to keep Time Banks general and open.”
“The big problem is: how do they account for how they have spent the money? That’s where we have the major problem… An organization wants to put everything in safe areas and organize it all. When you face a funder the first thing he wants to know is how you are going to achieve some objectives, and they all must be arbitrary. But the beauty of the work is the fact that you never can predict what is going to happen. A good community builder, time broker, has no idea where the next connection leads them to and what’s going to happen next. You have no way of predicting it. That doesn’t work if you deal with people and peoples’ lives. There are ups and downs. “
“Sponsors know this, of course. You can sit down and talk with evaluators and they say ‘we know this, but there is nothing else we can do’, because the system is bigger than any individual to change it.”
“So, you have an objective to reach, or a set of objectives, to rescue some situation, to provide some remedy for some people who really need it, and it is obviously a predetermined plan and it often gets professionalized. And it’s colonization, it’s saying: ‘this is how you should do things here. We determine this is the best thing you should be doing’. “
“I'm not criticizing them. I understand how they justify that stuff. But, that cultural shift [is difficult]; they can’t see any other way of working. All the evaluation systems are set up on the deficit model. All the evaluation systems say is how to measure the strength of the intervention. How powerful the intervention was on people’s lives to bring about the outcomes that somebody else has defined from the outside. The first thing the evaluation wants you to do is to determine the baseline of just how awful the situation is. But as soon as you start dealing with people and wanting people to lead, the last thing you want to do, when they enter the relationship, is to get them to define themselves in terms of their problems and issues.”
“So, you have to prove you have this or that disaster and show how you've improved things. But that has nothing to do with community building. The only people who can build the community are the people who live there. All the thinking is in terms of the efficiency of an organization, but what we're talking about is so much more than the organization; it’s a way of life.”
“We got a really good project, an ABCD project. We got funding for it and we've been fighting from day one to try and change the evaluation systems and we're not going to do it. The funder is insisting on a 14-page questionnaire. It’s for older people, an ‘aging well’ project. What we're saying is that the first thing you’ve got to do is to look for the best in people, look what they've got to offer, boost up their self-confidence, get them to network with each other and let them determine what happens next. The last way you’re going to do that is if you go in with a 14-page questionnaire with questions like 'have you ever been disillusioned’.“
“With all the evaluations you end up creating arbitrary evaluation processes, arbitrary targets, which have absolutely nothing to do with what is going to happen. If you are really dealing with people, there is no linear route from where you are today to a cohesive community.”
There is, therefore significant conflict over the (re-)orientation of civil society organizations, with the risk of these being re-oriented away from their core mission, values and approaches by funding organizations that seek to impose their own agendas and ways of working on those they fund, even at risk of this diverting and undermining the activity they purport to support.
It was clear both to Martin Simon and to David Boyle that the regulatory relationship needed clarification and that some pronouncement by government would be needed over timebanking and its legal status.
David Boyle has stated that: “It was clear that there were various regulatory things that needed sorting out. One was the tax issue with the danger that it could be taxed. There was a benefits issue, which was the big one really; you know, if the very people you need to involve couldn't take part because they were earning credits and these might be deducted from their benefits. Then there was the charitable status. I wish I could say we systematically went about solving them. I don't think we did. But what we did do is take the opportunities to solve them when they emerged. It was an opportunist thing.”
The lessons (gradually learned) are: (i) top-down approaches to organising grassroots initiatives are inconsistent with the core mission of timebanking, can divert attention from the core mission, and can undermine the asset-based community development approach; and (ii) establishment systems and organizations and their cultures are not easily changed. They are too big to be changed by individuals and elements within them are resistant to change.
Since money typically comes tied to the top-down policy objectives of the sponsoring organization, it comes with imposed agendas, imposed interventions, and imposed ways of monitoring these. This stops local people from having the local control and autonomy needed to develop own solutions. This interferes with the ethos and principles of ABCD.
Martin Simon explains what lessons have been learned:
“I guess [when we started] we were naïve. We thought working together [with government and its agencies] we could actually stop the majority of the resources being spent on accountants and office workers monitoring that money is spent properly. We thought we could get money into the community. One of the saddest things is that there is still no way that you can get money direct to people. So you have clones [intermediaries] to channel the money through and then their priority is looking after their own salaries. I can totally understand this. Their main purpose becomes the survival of their salary and the survival of their organization. “
“So often those in the sector are tied up with protocols, in feeding back and writing reports and they are not developing community, they are keeping the funders in place. “
"You can’t change it. So the shift that I made, I can’t say that all timebanking people made this, is to accept that what we're about is a culture of community and any day that I'm not contributing to a culture community I'm not doing my job.”
“Gloucester time banks have been going now since 1998. I'm not sure if most of the members would even know about the ideological side of timebanking or the aspirations of bringing back the commons, but they know what the relationships are that they have and they know the people who are local are a part of the same thing. They just know that it is a good thing, they can call on people, and there are people [there] when they need a bit of help. And they can feel very useful when they are being called upon.”
“Even the time credits, when I think of that particularly, it is almost like we had to create the whole time credits to gain attention, to gain credibility, to get resources to actually set these things up. But over time I think we've worked out that about 56% of people carry on their relationships once they’ve got started. And that’s where the ABCD [Asset Based Community Development] came in and why I do that all the time now. It’s the connecting. That connecting doesn't happen on its own. But it’s the most powerful thing we have. There are thousands of small conversations inside any community, but then you need some structure to stimulate them.“
“The buzz word now is scaling up. We have a sort of saying to be aware of the siren calls for hugeness and, you know, it’s got to be bigger, got to be bigger, got to be bigger. But why do we have to get bigger? Small - local - slow - is fine! And that is how people live their life; they don’t dedicate their entire time, they dip in and dip out… They [time banks] have to grow from a group… and it has to be no more than half a dozen people who are prepared to drive it through the first year or two and then they are up and running and, as I say half of it carries on in the relationships they have with each other anyway which is what we want anyway. “
This gradual realization has led Fair Shares to look toward other business models that provide for greater financial autonomy and independence. Fair Shares has developed its own social enterprise solutions (such as a thrift/charity shop) that provide a high degree of financial and operational independence. It has also worked to develop a motorway services project in Gloucester, which has been developed around community principles and values. Some of the profits of the development are channelled into a Trust Fund to support local organisations, among them Fair Shares.
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