This is a CTP of initiative: Hour Exchange Portland (USA)
This CTP describes the phase of rapid early development of Hour Exchange Portland, Maine. The phase is characterised by rapid growth and optimism, based upon the interest shown in timebanking by the philanthropist Richard Rockefeller, his establishment and multifaceted support of HEP and a network of time banks in Maine and New England, and the support and interest shown in this venture by external parties.
The enthusiasm around the rapid growth and success of timebanking was, for a time, self-reinforcing. Rapid, early expansion of the network in New England seemed to demonstrate that all that was needed for the timebanking movement to expand was to create new time banks. It was assumed that after being set up in a new place they would take hold and become self-sustaining; i.e. it was assumed that the time bank members would themselves ensure the sustainability of each time bank. However, this was proven ultimately to be over-optimistic. There is a need, also, to develop and implement a successful business plan to provide for the time bank to sustain once the initial period of establishment funding comes to an end. More attention was paid in this early phase of rapid development of HEP and the associated Maine and New England time banks to creating new time banks than was paid to ensuring that the ones already created had a sustainable business model.
Richard Rockefeller set up the Time Bank Hour Exchange Portland (HEP) in 1996 originally under the name ‘Maine Time Dollars’ and covered the basic operational costs. Initially he had foreseen to fund only the start-up phase of development. However, as the Portland and Maine Time Banks had not managed to establish independent and self-reliant funding streams, Richard Rockefeller funded them until his unexpected and untimely passing in an air accident in 2014. Auta Main recalls that:
“Richard’s (timebanking] ambitions were, first, let’s get a really successful model in Portland, which we did, and then let’s try to replicate this. At one point we had around 12 time banks in Maine. We [also] helped one in Massachusetts; we spent a lot of time with the people there. We helped a couple of time banks in New Hampshire and one in Newburyport. We were all working together. So, first, we were Maine Time Dollars. Then we were Maine Time Banks and then we were New England Time Banks. ‘Hour Exchange’, that name came after I left. When I left [2005], Richard had said ‘I'm going to fund this for maybe another 3 or 4 years, but beyond that...’ And he never thought he would be funding it forever. That was not his intention. He thought that there would be a way to make them sustainable and that was always part of our goal and in our minds. It was probably very naïve of us, but we thought that the members could to it.”
The first phase of the operation of HEP (Maine Time Dollars) was characterized by enormous local support and interest. Richard Rockefeller had implemented a board consisting of influential people from Maine. These lent the Time Bank legitimacy and they used their connections and influence to raise awareness of the Time Bank among other organisations and win support for it. The emergence of HEP represented a breakthrough for timebanking in the US. Its rapid early growth, its expansion in terms of scope of activities, and the success it achieved in supporting replication (quickly becoming the hub of a network of new time banks in Maine and New England) secured a position for HEP as the flagship time bank in the US timebanking movement.
In this respect, HEP played a decisive role in spreading timebanking across the state of Maine, across New England and throughout the US. It played a role also in bringing the timebanking concept to Europe. HEP organized the first international conference on timebanking in 1996 and hosted annual conferences thereafter. The first international conference was attended by Martin Simon. He implemented the first UK Time Bank, Fair Shares in Gloucester.
The first wave of success contributed significantly to an emerging enthusiasm and optimism around the venture, which appeared to be taking off spectacularly. Several factors contributed to the rapid progress: the establishment of an influential Board, secure financial support provided by Richard Rockefeller to cover core costs of the time banks, success in winning grants, success in securing support from the Americorps VISTA program (Volunteers In Service To America) and interest from local churches wanting to set up time banks within their congregations. These factors all contributed to a phase of early rapid expansion, involving the growth and consolidation of HEP and the establishment of other time banks within Maine and New England, creating a regional timebanking network with HEP at the hub and as the driver of network expansion. The focus at this stage was on creating new time banks and growing the network. The issue of how the time banks would sustain longer term, while in the back of the minds of those involved, was not a forefront concern.
Auta Main remembers the importance of the Board that Richard Rockefeller established as a factor in that early rapid acceleration and in raising wider awareness of timebanking within Maine and of Richard Rockefeller’s connections as a physician with links to medical organisations and professionals:
“Richard had already established the Board when I joined. The people that were on the board were the same people who were on the board for the whole 8 years that I was involved with them. Having that consistent long-term support was very helpful. We did ask the board members to make a donation first themselves. Initially we said US $1000 or to raise that much. All the Board Members contributed themselves or agreed to raise money from friends. They were getting friends to give, say, US$ 250. Well they didn't raise millions that way, but they made other people of influence aware of what timebanking was. And they invited them [to join us]. We had an annual conference every year and we usually had a couple of hundred people come to that, mostly our Board Members and our community partners.”
“Richard had been a physician and one of the projects we did in Portland was to work with some doctors. Health care was big for us because a couple of our board members were doctors and another was a nurse. That was an area Richard had great interests in… and we decided that we wanted some of our members to be able to get health care through the time bank. We worked with a group of doctors at True North Healthcare. There were about 15 doctors there, different varieties… acupuncturists, chiropractors and so on… Richard met with them and they loved the idea of timebanking and joined immediately. We ended up through three years having somebody working in their office doing filing for time dollars. That was a pretty good exchange, a very successful one. But again, because Richard was somebody in that world he had connections there. It really helped us to grow and to plant the seeds. It was the same for the other Board members. One was leading a women’s group in Maine and after that was leading national women’s groups and then international groups, so they had a lot of connections”.
“In Maine we are fortunate because Richard Rockefeller basically fully funded us for several years. The nice thing about Richard giving us all that funding is we were really able to experiment a lot which helped us to grow quickly.” “I think timebanking is so important, because it is a natural way to bring back some of those connections that we just don't have… It really was so heart centered. Everything we did was based on how we can help each other. In everything we did we would think, OK, who can benefit from this and in what ways? Who can benefit as a giver? Who can benefit as a receiver? How can this help a certain group in our community or us? Timebanking is about giving everybody an opportunity to be vulnerable and everybody an opportunity to feel really confident and successful. Robin Lakin, the woman I started the Maine Time Banks with, was amazing. She would meet with every new person… everybody who wanted to be a member. She would always say to them: ‘we want to know what you need… it isn’t only about what you can give’. She was always really clear on that point. This [timebanking] isn't about just being a volunteer to help others. This is about letting others help you too. That is what stood out in timebanking… what made us different from a regular volunteer agency where you had one group of volunteers and one group of receivers.”
The funding of the operational costs by Richard Rockefeller allowed HEP to use grants obtained from other sources for implementing special projects. The financial possibilities provided privileged opportunities for experimentation, development of organizational structures and new ways of organizing. Grants were used for example to buy a Time Dollar Taxi for those in need of lifts, to implement computer courses where younger people taught the elderly, and for a home repair scheme.
Auta Main recalls that the time bank provided its members with access to services they otherwise could not easily access including home repairs, transport, and entertainment.
“We certainly did home repair. That was a huge piece of what every time bank has been. We probably had 10 members, mostly guys, who were just very handy... sometimes it was basic things… taking the air conditioner out and putting one in… other times it was repairing a floor or putting a new wall up. They were always busy. The home repair was always one of our top services. Another was access to transport. The entertainment piece was important too - where members would have access to shows in the area, theater and plays. Because most of our members […] had never been to a play, this was a big deal for them.”
Another key area was access to health care. Members of the time banks were able to access medical services because the membership included medical practitioners.
“One way we were really able to launch new time banks was through the AmeriCorps Vista [or America volunteers] program. We also set up time banks together with the Episcopal and Unitarian churches.” “About 4-5 years in to my time at HEP and TBUSA [i.e. around 2000-2001] we started working with AmeriCorp Vista. By the time I left [2005] I think we had about 30 AmeriCorp Vista volunteers working for us that year across the country as a whole. In Maine we were getting 5 or 6 a year. This helped us to launch new Time Banks. New neighborhood time banks were usually launched because we got one big grant. Usually, an AmeriCorps Vista volunteer would be for three years. That really gave us some stability to get things moving. We were not really thinking so much in terms of any social entrepreneurship model at that point [to provide scope to sustain the time bank after the initial funding ended], but [more thinking that] launching something for three years with an AmeriCorps Vista person will give time to get something like that off the ground.”
The other model HEP used to grow their operations was to collaborate with churches, mainly with the Unitarian and Episcopal churches.
“It was a way that they [the churches] chose to do outreach and […] it was their way of doing good in their communities. But they also loved the idea of the reciprocity. They got it.”
The combination of positive factors supported a cycle of rapid growth that fed off the energy and enthusiasm it generated.
“I remember of course, as we were growing, the energy of the growth, of what was happening in Maine. Exponentially, we went from one time bank to 7 or 8 time banks in 3 or 4 years. Nobody else had done that. But we had Richard’s funding and we were experimenting with all sorts of different things. It was an amazing positive energy when we were meeting with the national group and sharing the numbers of hours that were exchanged and the numbers of members we had… and from such a small state. It was very exciting.”
The establishment and rapid early development of HEP was facilitated and co-produced by several contributing actors.
Edgar Cahn was influential, since it was his work in promoting timebanking that led Richard Rockefeller to become aware of timebanking. Richard Rockefeller attended a presentation by Cahn. This was influential in his shifting his philanthropic activities toward re-building communities and enhancing social cohesion.
The early growth of HEP was based on two different models. One involved the Americorps Vista programme. The other involved churches as co-creators of time banks. There were influential actors in these programs and organisations who contributed to the growth of HEP.
AmeriCorps VISTA (Volunteers In Service To America) is a still-active nation-wide program that allocates volunteers to specific projects of public interest. Auta Main describes the program as follows:
“Members make a minimum one-year, full-time commitment to serve on a specific project at a non-profit organization or public agency. They focus their efforts to build the organizational, administrative, and financial capacity of organizations that fight illiteracy, improve health services, foster economic development, and otherwise assist low-income communities.
Our AmeriCorps VISTA volunteers usually came in two categories: either they were recent college-graduates – and some of their college loans would get forgiven or delayed - that was part of the program – or they were seniors, older people that were not working or retired. For seniors the VISTA program was a way to bring in a few extra dollars as they did not have to pay taxes on it as income, so really just extra money for them. Typically, our AmeriCorps Vistas were young people or people 50+”.
Community organizations wanting volunteers to support their projects were required to apply and submit a proposal to the program organisers. HEP had applied for VISTA volunteers to help establish or grow neighbourhood Time Banks and had been repeatedly successful in being granted volunteers.
“Usually an AmeriCorps VISTA person was a three years’ position. That really gave us some stability to get things moving. We were not really thinking so much in terms of the social entrepreneurship model at that point, but three years with an AmeriCorps VISTA volunteer launching something gave us the opportunity to get something off the ground. AmeriCorps VISTAs was really of help in building capacity.
We got involved in AmeriCorps maybe 3 or 4 years in. You had to apply and send an application. It was like fund raising but easier. You knew if you hit the right points that you will get funded. Often we were generically saying ‘they are going to help us launch a neighborhood time bank in this region’. In Maine we had a lot: the Bar Harbor one, one of them in Rockland. AmeriCorps Vista people didn't get paid a lot. They literally made US$ 10000 or 12000 a year. The first thing we did was ask for three or four. The quickest way to get funded was if you said you would pay for one. Then they would give you four. Sometimes we would say we actually want one to help us grow a specific project, such as the time dollar taxi. Once we looked for one that would help us grow the entertainment piece where members would have access to all the shows in the area, theater and plays. Several we applied for just saying they are going to help us grow a generic neighborhood TB. At that point the AmeriCorps Visa program knew what we were talking about.
I got to be very friendly with the woman that was leading the program in New England and, over time, we got to the point where she said: why don't you apply to take a large group? If you apply for five or six people you apply to a regional organizer, but if you get to the place where you could take 25 or 30 AmeriCorps Vista volunteers then the program would actually start paying you to do it. We were at that point, probably a year or two before I left. We would get, say, a grant for 30 AmeriCorps Vistas and then we would reach out to all the time banks across the USA and ask ‘can you use one or two’ and, if you can,’ can you come up with US$ 10000’. If so, we can give you three or four people.”
The interest of church representatives in time banking led to an invitation from the Unitarian Church for HEP to make a presentation at the annual conference in Maine, which was attended by church ministers and activity coordinators. “I did a pitch about timebanking and they loved it. We had a little video we used to show and that was also very good - several of them afterwards liked the idea”. Following the pitch about timebanking, several congregations implemented a time-based service exchange scheme and volunteers took over the task of coordinators.
The rapid expansion of timebanking and the flagship status of HEP were co-produced by Richard Rockefeller, Edgar Cahn, the Members of the Board of HEP, the Director and staff of HEP, the support of key people in Maine, the support of the Americorps Vista program and its personnel and the support of church leaders among others. The energy and enthusiasm of this group was – to Auta Main’s recollection – infectious and the movement was carried on an upward trajectory also by its own momentum and success in delivering impact. These reinforced the sense of purpose and unstoppable progress that was being achieved.
Time banking was first developed in Japan. Independently, timebanking in the US traces back to origins in the time-based service exchange mechanisms developed and practiced by residents of the Grace Hill community in St. Louis in the 1970s. Timebanking became the central mechanism of the MORE program (Members Organised Resource Exchange) at Grace Hill, which attracted interest from many other organisations across the US and further afield that sought to understand and replicate the MORE model.
Edgar Cahn promoted timebanking in the US. He and Jonathan Rowe published a book about timebanking in 1992: “Time Dollars: The New Currency that Enables Americans to Turn Their Hidden Resource – Time – into Personal Security & Community Renewal”. Cahn’s bringing together of key concepts and ideas from a range of different originators and sources was fundamental for forging a coherent narrative around timebanking and his motivational and impassioned writing and speaking were important in securing support for timebanking.
Richard Rockefeller, who had hitherto focused his philanthropic efforts largely on environmental conservation, heard Cahn speaking about timebanking. From that point he devoted more of his philanthropic efforts toward community re-building. In 1996, he initiated the HEP (at that time – Time Dollars Maine) to contribute to the improvement of his own local community. Richard Rockefeller also co-founded TimeBanksUSA (TBUSA) together with Cahn. HEP hosted the first international timebanking conference in order to learn about timebanking from worldwide experience. This event was attended by people from many countries, including Japan, where timebanking had originated, and the UK. The first conference was attended by Martin Simon who introduced timebanking to the UK.
The early growth phase of HEP received support from the AmeriCorps Vista program. This program was originally the idea of President Kennedy who, in 1963, had envisioned a national service corps to “help provide urgently needed services in urban and rural poverty areas”. This was ultimately realised by President Johnson under the policy umbrella of the ‘War on Poverty’ and ‘The Economic Opportunity Act’ (1964). Since then, the number of VISTA volunteers has steadily increased. Nowadays 6,500 people are allocated annually to various projects across the USA through the program.
Although the early phase of growth was greatly successful and HEP became the flagship Time Bank of the US, known especially for its innovation and experimentation, HEP and the other time banks in the Maine and New England network were ultimately heavily dependent on funds provided by Richard Rockefeller to cover core costs. The issue of how to create an income stream to enable the time banks to sustain over the longer term was either not addressed or given insufficient attention. At the time, this seemed a secondary issue to expansion of HEP activities and the creation of new time banks. The issue also assumed less importance in the context of the reliable financial backing provided by Richard Rockefeller. Hence, the unexpected death of Richard Rockefeller in 2014 left HEP and the Maine time banks ill-prepared for sustaining themselves. Most of the Maine time banks have now closed or reduced their operations.
The rapid phase of early development of HEP and the Maine time banks was characterized and facilitated by positive energy and enthusiasm about timebanking on the part of the involved actors. The development was widely perceived to be positive and was not contested. Timebanking and the establishment of HEP and the other Maine and New England time banks received wide support from across the concerned communities.
During the early years, there was a close collaboration between HEP and TBUSA. Auta Main worked simultaneously as the Director of both organisations. There was later some disagreements over the governance of the US timebanking movement, which led to a growing division between HEP and TBUSA.
Independently of that development, issues arose over the sustainability of time banks both within the membership of the TBUSA network and in the network of Maine time banks centred on HEP. Around 70% of TBUSA time banks fail in their first three years. Within the set of Maine time banks founded with the philanthropic support of Richard Rockefeller, HEP has managed to sustain, but most of the other time banks have closed. This highlights that it is challenging to find or develop a business model for time bank sustainability.
Interestingly, perhaps the most long-lived and financially most secure US time bank, Partners-in-Care, was developed outside of the TBUSA membership network and without long-term financial support from a single backer. The sheer necessity for its founder, Barbara Houston, to address the financial and governance issues of her operation from the start is now seen by some timebanking analysts and practitioners, including Auta Main, to be among the reasons for the long-term success of Partners-in-Care. Auto Main points out that: “it is our extremities that make us innovate and Barbara was very innovative.”
The development of HEP was planned and prepared for, as part of a strategy to build a network of time banks across Maine centred on HEP as the hub and model for replication. The ambition was to create a state-wide network of time banks that could be synergistic and have critical mass. In order to learn from timebanking experiences elsewhere in the world, an international conference was convened by HEP. The initial workshop and conference was the precursor to an annual series of international timebanking conferences, which ran for several years.
Therefore, the growth of HEP and of generic neighbourhood Time Banks across Maine was anticipated and targeted. However, the rapidity of the development was not anticipated. This was made possible by the strong support received from across the Maine community, the innovativeness of the time banks and their appeal to members, and by partnerships that developed between HEP and the AmeriCorps Vista program and between HEP and local churches. These all accelerated the creation of new time banks.
Auta Main recalls: “The involvement with the churches wasn't a direction we were taking or had planned. It was more grassroots and organic. The Episcopal church was more of an isolated case. There wasn't a whole group of them. The Unitarian church was different. We got a call from a woman in Belfast who had heard about us and she asked ‘will you come and give a talk to our church’. I did and there were probably 10 people there. It wasn't a big group but they were all excited and wanted to do it. It happened there was to be a state Unitarian Church Conference and they felt there would be other churches that would be interested, so they had me come make a presentation there. There were break-out sessions and they had me organize one. There were maybe 20 people who came to that break out session and there were two [church time banks] that definitely got off the ground. There were others who expressed an interest, but there were two, one in southern Maine and one in Belfast, that really decided to do it.“
The attractiveness and appeal of timebanking to members was also heightened by the success in attracting medical practitioners to the membership and establishing projects that addressed access issues in the community, such as access to transport, home repair and theatre/concerts. Auta Main recalls the excitement that was generated at the time. “When we were launching a Time Bank there was – and I am sure there still is – excitement and inspiration of what is possible and how it can help you and other groups in your community and change lives, change what is accessible for people”.
As well as the self-reinforcing aspect of the energy and enthusiasm created by the rapid development of the Maine time banks, the learning achieved around how to establish a time bank was codified and used to support the creation of additional time banks. “At that time – probably in 2003/2004 – we worked together with TBUSA and put together a binder on how to start a Time Bank. We had a video that went with it, a DVD”.
Despite the early success of establishing Time Banks and pursuing a growth strategy, it has since emerged that establishing new time banks does not actually of itself deliver self-sustaining networks of Time Banks.
We were experimenting with everything. We opened a couple of time banks in Maine under the umbrella of a community action agency, called CAP (community action program). Basically CAP provided services to low income people. They loved the timebanking idea: they liked the home repair piece, they liked the transportation. They launched two cafes. One was in the Rockland area of Maine. CAP was supporting it financially. But that kind of funding is at best from one year to the next. CAP didn’t know if they would get federal funds. So it would be successful for a couple of years [but it wouldn’t sustain]. We were trying to do the neighborhood thing and see if the members could actually keep it going. Okay we had agencies that wanted to do it. We had churches that wanted to do it. We were looking at all these different pockets of support and at different strategies for getting them started and keeping them going.”
Auta Main cites as an example the case of the time bank taxi project, which was successful but, in the end, unsustainable, as it needed funds to sustain: “Members drove the Time Dollar Taxi, taking members to a variety of things. The car actually had a wheelchair lift so we could take wheelchair-bound people to doctors’ appointments, to the beach or to the airport. That was active for five or six years. We got enough grant money to keep it up and to pay for the gas and things like that. But again the experience was that, over time we hadn't made it sustainable, so the project would all end at some point”.
“The hard thing was that they did start Time Banks and there was somebody, maybe a senior or someone who was retired, and they’d work 20 hours a week to get this off the ground. But it always turned out to take more time than they anticipated, or to be more work than anticipated. So they’d do it for a year or two, but they just could not keep doing it. So without social entrepreneurship, some profit making center, it was hard for them to keep it going. And that seemed to be our experience in New England.”
The brokerage element was underestimated. Brokers are critical and decisive for the development of a Time Bank. A broker is able to handle a limited number of members and exchanges. If a Time Bank exceeds a certain limit, brokers tend to get overstretched. Over time they tend to ‘burn-out’. After a period of tremendous dedication, brokers “just cannot continue that kind of effort and it ends up not being able to sustain beyond that.”
Auta Main recalls that efforts were made to find models for “how to spin off the time banks”, so that they would operate on their own. “Richard thought that there would be a way to make them sustainable and that was always part of our goal and in our minds. This was probably very naive of us but we thought that the members could to it”. The feeling had been that securing an AmeriCorps Vista volunteer for three years would give time for this and that “maybe they’d develop a kitchen cabinet in their area [with] grassroots members that would help them grow, think about partnerships and what they are going to do in their regions”. It was felt, then, that “there would always be a couple of members that could do the coordination and keep it going. We really thought that this would be possible… I think we have learned [looking back] that it really was not possible.”
If one or two of the Unitarian time banks had been really successful in the longer term – and they were successful in the short-term – I think other Unitarian churches would have jumped on it… I think other churches would have jumped on it too. But again, the sustainability was so hard to demonstrate and it was hard to come up with the exact strategies.
The question of how much of it is the person is an important point. With one of the Unitarian church time banks, the person put so much into it. She was wonderful. She was exactly the right person to get it off the ground. She did it for at least three years, but then she couldn’t continue. She was moving into retirement and, physically, was having some issues. She couldn’t continue that kind of effort and beyond that it wasn’t possible to sustain the membership she’d had.
The stable financial support provided by Richard Rockefeller gave freedom for HEP to experiment, but also cushioned the Maine time banks from the financial reality that to sustain they would need to develop viable business models and wean away from total dependence on philanthropic and grant support. Auta Main says:
“We had time banks around the US come to Maine and spend time with our whole network of time banks and they were going from one to another talking to them. Then we started doing training around the country about how to start a neighborhood time bank. When we were launching a time bank there was, and I am sure there still is, that excitement and inspiration of what is possible and how it can help you and other groups in your community, how it can change lives and change what is accessible for people. It did all those things. But in some ways it was putting a cart before the horse. I don't mean to make light of what happened in Maine and I was certainly part of it and I loved every minute of it, I really did. But it was disappointing that we didn't figure out the sustainability piece.”
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