Currency Systems
Backed Currencies		Ithaca HOURS
LETS		National Currencies
ROCS		Time Dollars
Complementary Currencies

Time Dollars Service Exchange

Benefits of the Time Dollars model:

Backed by an hour of community service and created via mutual credit, Time Dollars are the simplest currency system to implement: the only infrastructure needed is a central registry, which can be as simple as a notepad or blackboard, to record account balances.

Time Dollars are always sufficient, so they tend to encourage a "favor economy" of cooperation and trade among participants.

How Time Dollars are issued:

Time Dollars are created via mutual credit: Each transaction is recorded as a corresponding credit and debit in the accounts of the participants.

Time Dollars are measured in hours of service.

One hour is measured the same independently of place and circumstances, so Time Dollars are immune to the fluctuations in value of commodity-backed and fiat currencies.

Time Dollars exchanges are fixed.

In most adaptations of the Time Dollars system, each participant's time is valued equally, whether s/he is a novice or an extensively trained expert. For that reason, the Time Dollars model works best in very narrowly defined communities (retirement homes, for example), where everyone's time, skill, experience, and effort is regarded as equal.

Structural incentives in the Time Dollars system:

Time Dollars

• recognize, and thus encourage, reciprocal community service;

• are backed with service time and thus resist inflation without encouraging hoarding; and

• are in sufficient supply, enabling trade and cooperation among participants.

Applications of the Time Dollars model:

• What is the Time Dollar Network?

• The Maine Time Dollar Network page and its mirror site

• the Service Exchange of Boulder County, Colorado

• Fremont Time in Seattle, Washington

• The Global Village Bank facilitates the exchange of computer- and Internet-related services.

• The Resource Exchange Bank

• The Vashon Time Island Service Exchange

• Fair Shares, the Time Dollars pilot in the UK

• Toronto Dollars

Please let us know if we missed one!

Related Resources

• The Time Dollar Institute is a "non-profit corporation that creates and sponsors initiatives so that the beneficiaries of social programs can become co-producers of education, justice, self-sufficiency, opportunity, community development, and social change".

• "Money: Make Your Own!" on the Coop America site includes "Twenty-five ways to get (and give) what you want without money".

• The University of Maryland's how-to guide on Service Credit Banking

• The Pick Up Tix proposal: trade community service for a ticket to a good show

• Do Something! aims to get young people involved in community leadership

• Project America's Action Guide for volunteer projects

• "Doing Well By Doing Good: A Market for Favors"

• a Minneapolis bank chair and CEO praises
  Joel Hodroff's Community Economic Development Scrip (CEDS)

• The ECO is designed to offset wage disparities in different parts of the world.

• Habitat For Humanity helps low-income families trade their "sweat equity" for an affordable home.

• Money is one kind of conscious agreement among community members, but people have experimented with several other collaborative agreements as well: sharing shelter, caring for each other's children, growing food together, and trading expertise, for example. The web, web conferencing in particular, is an excellent tool for almost all of these cooperative projects.
  • Intentional Communities

  • Cohousing groups on the web

  • Efrem Lipkin and others have initiated various Community Memory projects, like Project Scope, the Center for Civic Networking, and the Organization for Community Networks.

    Also check out the Community Networking page on the Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility site and the Center for Information, Technology, and Society page.

    Organizers of a conference on Community Internet Access and Local Economic Development provide this list of community access resources in Canada. Also, InterActivism allows you to send free faxes to U.S. policymakers.

  • The Farm is three square miles chock full o' sustainable enterprises

  • Pacifica Radio.

  • Community-Supported Agriculture

  • We the People

  • The Community Information Resource Center page

  • Wendell Berry's Community in 17 Sensible Steps.

  • Peruse the contents of a community-building anthology

  • Building Communities

  • Win-Win Accounting

• Olaf Egeberg's Non-Money: That 'Other Money' You Didn't Know You Had reviewed by Barbara Brandt

• Partnerships For Change

• Impact Online presents a guide to volunteer opportunities in your area.

• "Barter Site Aims to Launch Parallel Economy"

Please let us know if we missed one.

The Money Conference

Join us in The Money Conference, where we're gathering to compare insights on all kinds of money systems--old, new, high- and low-tech, real or theoretical--and to synthesize from our shared experience wiser and more efficient models of exchange media. Sign up for Motet conferencing, then come on in and introduce yourself--or jump right to our Time Dollars conversation.

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