This is a CTP of initiative: Hour Exchange Portland (USA)
This CTP describes tensions that grew over timebanking governance in the US and that led to HEP and TBUSA, which had worked formerly very closely together, to begin to follow more separated development pathways. There were several related issues that gave some in the timebanking movement cause for concern over its governance direction. The issue of software governance and the policy of TBUSA to charge fees to members to use its new software, Community Weaver, was one such concern.
When HEP was established and for a few years thereafter, HEP and the other Maine time banks used a simple spreadsheet based upon Microsoft Access software that had been developed for the purpose by Kent Gordon. This was distributed on a disc and all that was needed to run it was to have Microsoft Access on the host computer. This required a lot of interventions by the coordinator of a time bank to arrange exchanges and each time bank had its own coordinator-held software and data set. This was not mounted and accessible in real time on any internet-based platform so, even though it was simple to understand and (in that sense) user-friendly and worked it had limited functionality and it was not easily accessible for members.
Auta Main remembers: “It was really user friendly. We used it at least for the first five or six years that I was involved. And it made it so simple because he [Kent Gordon] just gave people a disc. What he created for the time was just perfect”. Members “were able to put in [their services and requests] and do the tracking, but you had to make the kind of match maker role. You had to have somebody doing that work”.
With developments in technology and increasing internet access for the general public it became necessary to adapt to the new circumstances. New possibilities arose. The next step was to develop new ways of organizing and tracking time-based service exchanges using internet-based timebanking software platforms.
Around the turn of the millennium, Auta Main received a call from Mark McDonough. Auta Main recalls:
“He had called me in Portland, maybe we were 5 or 6 years in at that point, and he said ‘I was reading about time banks and I live on the north shore of Massachusetts; I want to come up and see the Portland time bank’. I said come, so he came and visited. At the time we didn't own a building. We were renting a building and space. He checked it out. He said he was involved with computers [it emerged after that he was actually an early internet specialist] and said ‘I think I could maybe help you with that piece and I need to meet Edgar and Richard.’
“At the time we had no idea who this guy really was, but Edgar and Richard said they thought it would be worth meeting up. Edgar flew up and we all had dinner together. It emerged later he really wasn’t the grassroots kind of guy… his parents had owned manufacturing plants and he had a trust fund. To cut the long story short, about two weeks later he gave TBUSA a million dollars. Then he gave us a million dollars for a couple more years. So he became pretty influential in that time when we were really trying to grow TBUSA.“
“We used some of this money to hire a consultancy to help us through that growth process. I'm sure you’ll have heard experiences before with other non-profits, but what happened here was that, because of the money that he had invested, he wanted a lot of say over how it was going to be grown. In some aspects he had good and helpful ideas. There were other things he wanted that some of us felt went against the spirit of timebanking….”
“…Community Weaver [an internet-based timebanking software] was, in the end, what he developed [for us] as an online tracking system for time banks, and he wanted to charge groups and members for it…. up to that point we had a free system that wasn't online. He was bringing us into the 21st century, but we were really struggling with that piece and we spent hours at meetings talking about what we should do…. if we charge per person, per group. At the point of joining, a time bank had always [until then] been free. We still liked the idea that it is free. He was really pushing us in the direction of wanting to have some membership fees. That was part of it. And part of it was we were developing the training and the curriculum at that time and he felt that he should have a lot of say in what was in the curriculum. He was a great guy. He was extremely generous. But at that point I [and a lot of others] just felt discouraged.”
Online software has since become an essential ICT tool for Time Banks as, having once joined the time bank, members are able to set up and record their exchanges more autonomously. That frees the time of coordinators from day-to-day routine work to making them more able to undertake functions that need judgement and sensitivity, such as safeguarding, and to be involved in recruiting members, organizing events and activities, monitoring activity levels and evaluating impacts, defining new areas of activity, developing pilot projects, and promoting the time bank, etc. The transition from using offline tools to using online software platforms has been transformational for timebanking, but it has also created internal governance conflicts. Online software platforms constitute a new asset that is of value to time banks and their members, they provide a means to reach time bank members and to learn about them, they provide the possibility to gather data automatically about users and their activities, and they give scope for collected data to be interrogated for a wide range of uses. That puts a lot of power into the hands of those who control them.
Software and data governance have since become central issues in the governance of the timebanking movement. Although the integration of new technologies into timebanking operations marked major improvement in the efficiency and effectiveness of timebanking operations, the development also caused tensions within and among timebanking organizations and between the membership organisations and the grassroots time banks and their members. This development was accompanied by rising tensions about governance and the relations around it became tense. Concerns arose over issues of charging fees to time banks and their members for using software platforms (should membership and use of software be free versus at cost), over the ownership and development of the software (open source versus proprietary), over data (who own the data, who has access to data, who has control and rights over information generated from data, etc.), over decision making, etc. These and related concerns resurfaced when the second version of Community Weaver (v2) was launched.
The hOurworld cooperative was established by three individuals who had met through HEP and who decided to provide time banks with an alternative software platform to Community Weaver (v2.) Their software platform, Time & Talents (TnT), was developed and offered to time banks and their members on a free-to-use basis. HEP became one of the first time banks to use TnT.
Issues surrounding timebanking platform governance have become central to the development and governance of timebanking generally since Community Weaver was created. These issues have contributed to splits in the movement, its ‘re-birthing’ several times over and to the emergence of adapted forms of timebanking, some of which avoid the use of timebanking software; e.g. the variants using time credits issued in the form of paper notes, such as Spice.
The development of ‘Community Weaver’, the first online, access-based software for Time Banks, was facilitated and co-produced by several actors.
Edgar Cahn, who had promoted timebanking in the USA and more widely, created a narrative and forged a fundable movement around timebanking. He established the Time Dollar Institute (TDI). This had been established largely to fulfil a research and conceptual (theory developing) role around time-based service exchange. TBUSA was founded to provide the missing support and membership organisation for the emerging network of US Time Banks. Some confusion has been introduced into this history because TBUSA was created by changing the name of the Time Dollar Institute (TDI) to TBUSA, carrying over its designation and registration number as a non-profit organisation to the new name and entity, TBUSA. The TDI was then re-created as a sub-organisation of TBUSA. TBUSA as the timebanking membership support organization developed online software and provided its members with access to this on a fee paying basis.
Richard Rockefeller founded HEP in 1996 and contributed to the establishment of TBUSA. He provided financial support for both civil society organizations for their early development to facilitate growth of timebanking in New England and across the US. One of Richard Rockefeller’s contributions to timebanking was that he had an extensive set of contacts and friends. Kent Gordon, who developed the first timebanking software used by HEP and the other Maine and New England time banks was a personal friend of Richard Rockefeller and he had ICT expertise.
“Kent Gordon was a friend of Richard who lived in southern Maine and he had been an IT guru in Silicon Valley. He had moved back to Maine and was retired. Richard called him and said ‘will you create a database for this?’ And he did. And it was really user friendly”.
However, as technology and especially ICT tools developed, it became necessary for Time Banks to transition to online platforms to realize more of the potential of time banks and to ease the work of time bank brokers. The philanthropist Mark McDonough played the main role in this transition by developing Community Weaver. Richard Rockefeller and Edgar Cahn were both positive about this development at the time.
However, the development of the platform also brought with it new governance challenges, especially over charging for use of the platform and over the collection and use of timebanking data.
An interesting question is whether these issues were inevitable. Auta Main refers to these issues as ‘growing pains’:
“That was a really big point of contention for all of us and it was a growing pain, this whole idea about whether or not we needed to pay and that technology is so expensive and it changes all the time”
“We also knew the critical importance of the data… that was just a growing pain that we were going to have no matter what.”
Differences in perspectives and opinion contributed to some disruptions in the US timebanking movement. Several Members of the Board of TBUSA resigned around the time of the release of Community Weaver (v2). An alternative software platform (TnT) was developed and those involved (Stephen Becket, Terry Daniels and Linda Hogan) created a new organization – hOurworld –as a cooperative company offering software to time banks and their members free of charge. All three had formerly been involved in HEP. HEP was among the first time banks to adopt TnT.
Auta Main who had been the Director of HEP as well as a board member at TBUSA resigned from both posts in 2006.
The major contextual factor is the trend of rapid development of ICT and, specifically, the internet, which was both empowering for time banks but also challenging. In this case, the main new challenges related to the costs of ICT and who will pay these and to the governance of data that can be developed to have commercial value as well as value in demonstrating outcomes and impacts of social innovation (e.g. with value in calculating social return on investment, etc.).
The development of an online software solution to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of time banks and to improve data collection was seen as positive and not contested. However, it led to highly sensitive governance issues and to differences of perspectives and positions. Decisions about control and terms of use were contested by the involved parties, leading to questions over leadership.
Ultimately, these led to splits in the US timebanking movement. Auta Main makes the point explicitly that development of the software platform proved contentious in the end and added to other governance integrity concerns:
“That was a really big point of contention for all of us…, this whole idea about whether or not we needed to pay”
The issue was especially contentious because timebanking is a social innovation based on moneyless transactions and equality. It is a social innovation that is supposed to be accessible for those without access to money and is supposed to provide moneyless access to services. There is an inherent inconsistency with the idea of charging fees for access to timebanking platforms and there is a potential hypocrisy when the leadership of the movement advocates moneyless exchange among time bank members but seeks money payment from its members for membership and services. This raises issues of leadership integrity and conformity with core values of the social innovation. It raises potential conflicts of interest, especially when individuals within the leadership have different roles that are not separated, as applied in this instance.
The level of anguish is clear from Auta Main’s account:
“We were really struggling with that piece and we spent hours at meetings talking about what we should do…. He was really pushing us in the direction of wanting to have some membership fees.”
“Of course a small neighbourhood Time Bank probably could not afford that unless they had established independent and secure funding streams”.
Governance issues raised by the development of Community Weaver contributed to disagreements, resignations from the Board of TBUSA, resignations from post, and splits in the US timebanking movement. They had repercussions for HEP, which adopted TnT.
While there was an awareness among timebanking leaders that timebanking would need to transition to online software platforms, this was not on the immediate horizon at HEP or TBUSA until the possibility was raised by Mark McDonough.
Once the possibility was raised, an online software platform was anticipated to offer ways to harness new and more efficient technologies that could support new ways of organizing and doing timebanking.
The positive potential of new ICT tool and technologies in supporting time banking was anticipated and was the basis for going ahead with the development.
However, the negative side effects, if fully foreseen, were downplayed or were judged not likely to be as damaging as they actually proved to be. In practice, the governance challenges proved hard to handle and they have had repercussions for timebanking that continue to this day.
Implementing fees had negative impact on the hitherto prevailing enthusiasm and positive energy surrounding timebanking at HEP and more widely in the USA.
The developing timebanking movement in the US split around the time of the release of Community Weaver (v2), with some time banks using Community Weaver and others adopting TnT.This split was also linked to technical problems with Community Weaver (v2), which was released before it had been tested fully. Reverse migration from Community Weaver V2 to V1 was not possible, which further added to the impetus for time banks to switch to TnT.
Independently of this development it is important to note that few time banks under the TBUSA umbrella have lasted long term. Around 70% fail within three years of being set up, which highlights that meeting core costs of time banks is challenging and that adding to core costs through software charges increases the challenge time banks face in meeting core costs. HEP has sustained, though many of the Maine and New England time banks have closed or now operate on a reduced scale compared with their peak levels of activity.
The most successful and long-lived time bank in the US, Partners-in-Care, has its own governance model, its own business model and its own software. It is strongly mission-driven. It has been immune to the problems described in this CTP by virtue of its independent development and leadership.
Auta Main considers that it was a mistake on the part of those leading the US timebanking movement not to take the work and achievements of Barbara Huston at Partners-in-Care more seriously and to have learned lessons from her activities about time bank governance and business models.
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