A Member-led Time Bank
(from the Start-Up Manual)
As you and your core group plan, organize and operate your Time Bank, make sure you get the people-support you will need. You need a number of different individuals to join you in planning and setting up the Time Bank. Our experience has taught us that Time Banks nearly always fail when they are staffed by one person who has lots of enthusiasm and vision, but still is only one person! In truth, Time Banking is all about ‘team leadership’ so creating a Time Bank where members are fully engaged and invested in its operations and management is vital to its success. If you know that you do better behind the scenes than leading and inspiring others, find someone as your partner who likes and is good at the front-person role.
Everyone is so busy these days that it’s challenging to get folks to take on a leadership position unless it is shared, rotated -- or paid. Make sure there are at least two leaders to take on the roles described below for your Time Bank. For anything larger than a Friends Time Bank, you will need three or more people sharing the leadership. Once you get going it is a good idea to have the past, present and future coordinator work as a team and rotate every 6-12 months. Membership fees are modest so they will not cover the cost of a paid position. But nothing prevents you from paying the leaders some bonus Time Dollars™ in recognition for the work they have done.
There are six main leadership roles in a Time Bank:
For a Friends Time Bank, two people could do all six roles. There doesn’t have to a separate person for each role. We have separated all the leadership roles so you can make sure that every role has at least one person who is accountable for making things in that happen in that area of activity.
The more people there are sharing these leadership roles, the lighter the load. If there were 20 members and a person for every role it might seem like a top heavy organization or you could look at it as a deeply participatory organization. Each of the roles is designed to call up a single set of skills, so that leaders know they can choose a role that will be a good fit, one they will enjoy doing and will know they can do well. Whenever there is more than one person in a role, there will be a need to make sure that someone takes care of the group itself. Is everyone in the group informed. Are the members being respectful of each other’s contributions?
Being the overall team leader, role VI, calls for making sure that the group as a whole is working. It does not mean telling people what to do! It means making sure that information flows are working smoothly. It means giving and receiving accurate, useful information in a timely way. It means knowing when to bring the whole group together to make sure that all the leaders have a good understanding of the whole Time Bank as well as their own smaller piece.
No matter how many people on the leadership team it is a good idea to designate a support person or support team behind each leadership position. A person can be the leader in one role and the designated support person in another role. This allows for people to get sick, busy or out of town and the role tasks will still be covered. When it comes time to rotate the team roles, you have an understudy who is already familiar with the role.
We suggest that you do not officially open your Time Bank until someone has agreed to take on each of these roles for at least 6 months, and you have a second person in line to take over from the first.
There is an interesting phenomenon to be aware of when asking people to take on leadership roles. It’s is generally much harder to get one person to take on a role than two. People often feel too busy or they are uncertain about their ability to take on a leadership role by themselves. But if you ask them to work with a partner – as the support or lead person in the role – that often gets people over the commitment hump.
When one or two people agree to take on a leadership role, they should know that it does not mean they have to take on all the tasks of that role by themselves – they just have to be responsible for making sure they are all done. The more they can involve other members the better – just as long as the jobs are done. When you go over the role descriptions together, you can talk about this in more detail.
Time Banks give people support to try leadership roles that they can grow into. The whole coordinator team supports each other and covers for each other. There is also a community of experienced coordinators who can answer your questions at the on-line forums.
You may be thinking at this point that a Time Bank takes a lot of time to set up and run. It’s true, it does take time. But it is a time investment that pays you back richly. As the months and years go by, your Time Bank will provide the members with opportunities to use their time doing things they really love, in ways that connect them more deeply to their friends and neighbors. And, depending on the purpose you have chosen for your Time Bank, it could be saving the members time and money as well.
The Time Bank Ambassador role is for networkers. They love to meet new people. They rarely work alone. They often enlist members to work with them to bring in more members. After all the best source of new members, is someone who has already experienced the benefits of membership in the Time Bank. All members should be encouraged to bring in people who they would like to trade with. If you want veterinary care for Time Dollars™, recruit your vet!
The Time Bank Ambassador role focuses on community outreach to prospective new members. They run the introduction potlucks in partnership with the events coordinator and possibly the membership coordinator. Their tasks might include:
• Creating recruiting materials from the brochures & fliers/posters found on-line
• Presenting Time Banking to local community groups/individuals
• Posting Time Bank fliers/brochures around the community and on local list serves
• Hosting Time Bank parties (like Tupperware parties!) in member’s homes
• Finding media support to write articles and post listings of meeting dates/times
The Membership Coordinator is the most important leadership role in the Time Bank. The person who takes on this role is the classic “people person.”
• They love to get to know people’s stories and people often end up being surprised how much they shared.
• They intuitively grasp people’s best qualities and aren’t picky about (or blind to) people’s foibles. They also have a good sense of who will like each other.
• They are asset mappers. They enjoy helping people find their skills and matching them with others who need them.
The membership coordinator has three main tasks – member orientation, keeping in touch, and match making. The membership coordinator runs the Demonstration workshops with the Events Coordinator and possibly the web master or Time Bank ambassador.
A. Member Orientation
Member orientations provide an opportunity for both the member and the Membership coordinator to share mutual expectations and understanding about the nitty-gritty of how Time Banking works. Member orientation is often part of the Demonstration workshop. It can be done one-on-one or in small groups for the member orientation process. One-on-one orientations give the Member coordinator lots of time to get to know the new member. Group orientations provide an opportunity for members to meet one another and begin exchanging with each other right away. Group orientations save time - orienting up to 10 new members together.
The core task of the member orientation is to set-up some matches. The first Time Bank exchanges are the hardest. People are shy, they don’t know who to ask, and the software is unfamiliar. The membership coordinator often helps the new members to set up their on-line profile and add some offers and requests. The web master can help here too.
There is an art to eliciting people skills in the core economy because they are so easily overlooked in favor of “marketable” skills. The core economy skill form in the appendix is very helpful. Being a natural people person, the member coordinator will use their genuine interest in people to bring out these skills. They can work together to write colorful descriptions of the offerings.
It is very important to make sure that new members are engaged in giving or receiving within the first few weeks of joining. Members join because they want to be part of a community and if no one calls on them, it’s a let down. If they don’t find a match on their own, the membership coordinator should offer to help set up a match.
B. Keeping in Touch
The key task here is to encourage participation and keep in touch in a consistent and timely way. We encourage you to:
• Call new members & welcome them to the Time Bank (within a week of joining)
• Ask them how you can help? Encourage them to ASK for a service
• Let them know who the ‘matchmaker’ is if they would like assistance
• Let them know about upcoming events or activities
• Call or email ALL members once a month or every couple of months to check in
• Prioritize the calls, calling ‘inactive members’ to inspire participation
• Call ALL members at least once every couple of months just to touch base
• Encourage and inspire active participation in any way that you can!
The Events coordinator loves to create parties. They love the details involved with planning an event, they love buzzing around making sure that everyone is having a good time, and they love how everyone loves them for creating the party.
The member events/activities coordinator will:
• Coordinate and organize monthly gatherings for the Time Bank
• Explore ‘good locations’ for hosting the gatherings
• Create a ‘theme’ for each gathering to attract participation
• Create marketing materials; postcards/fliers and mail/email to members
• Coordinate and organize other group activities and classes for the Time Bank
• Ask members what they would like to do? Special activities might include: ball room dancing; yoga; park clean up; apple picking; strawberry picking; snow tubing/sledding. The list goes on! Your members will tell you what they want.
• Find teachers for classes.
• Find leaders with special expertise to run group activities like bird watching, game night, yoga, etc.
• Coordinate an annual OPEN HOUSE, celebrating the Time Bank! Ask members for help.
One of the best ways to inspire member participation is to host monthly gatherings and group activities. These gatherings give members the opportunity to get to know each other. It is so much easier to ASK for a service once you’ve met someone at a party.
The web master is at home in front of the computer. They don’t need to be a computer whiz, just comfortable with exploring software. They are the go to person when any member or leader doesn’t understand something about the on-line Community Weaver software.
The On-Line Time Banking Trainer/Webmaster has three main tasks:
A. Basic Trainings and Technical Support
There is a demo movie on the TimeBanks USA website that covers all the basics of running the Community Weaver software. Many members will find the demo movie provides all the training they need to go on-line and get started. Other members will need more training. The orientation coordinator can provide some of this basic training, but there needs to be at least one person in the Time Bank who knows the software inside and out.
B. Local Web master
All the on-line content on the community page of the local Time Bank is posted by the local webmaster. The web master uploads text on upcoming community events, urgent requests, and pictures of past events. No knowledge of HTML is required (though if you know it you can make even fancier pages). The member engagement coordinator can be trained to post events as well, but often needs the web master to answer questions when they get stuck.
C. Technical liaison to the TimeBanks USA web master
The local Time Bank web master is responsible for reading the software manual cover to cover. Sometimes users will ask questions that even stump the local web master. The local web master can look up answers in the software manual (users rarely do) or consult the software support web forum. The local web master is the contact person for surveys on which new features should be given priority and training on new features when they are implemented.
The Admin role is not just for introverts, but it is for people who get joy from keeping things neat and organized. As long as you keep your Time Bank small and informal it doesn’t take much money or admin time to run. The admin collects the dues, pays TimeBanks USA the annual membership fee, and whatever incidental expenses come up for printing brochures and flyers and running potlucks.
The member-led neighborhood Time Bank is essentially a club with dues and a petty cash account. It is not an incorporated entity. There is no liability insurance because you know everyone and you trust your neighbors not to sue you if something happens while you are doing them a favor.
We recommend a sliding scale of $40-10 for membership dues. Also we believe that all members should donate at least two Time Dollars™ per quarter to their Time Bank. These are just suggestions. It’s your Time Bank and your coordinator team decides what dues make sense for your Time Bank. Requiring a Time Dollar™ co-payment has the double benefit of lowering the cost of running the Time Bank and making the Time Bank more member-owned. Having the members feel a sense of ownership over their Time Bank is essential for long term survival and fund raising success down the road.
After a few years, the start-up leaders often get restless for bigger challenges. Members get a deeper sense of the value of Time Banking and want to make it a bigger part of their lives. They often want more members in the Time Bank to create a wider array of services. They may want to start projects that partner with other organizations and help those with fewer advantages. They may also want volunteer insurance ($5 per member), background checks ($8 per member), and a paid staff person to organize events and be readily available ($6,000-40,000 per year). All of these add to the Admin’s role.
Here’s a breakdown of what it might cost to run your Time Bank with the different Community Weaver licenses:
Cost of Running
A Time Bank with Community Weaver Mini Membership
35 members Affiliate Membership, 35-500 members Affiliate Membership with Part time Staff
Fees to TBUSA
Annual Membership fee $99 $500 $500
Other Potential Costs
Extra Costs per member* $10 $10 $20
Staff $6,000
Costs Per Member Breakdown
10 Members $19.90 NA NA
20 Members $14.95 NA NA
35 Members $12.83 $24.29 $205.71
50 Members $20.00 $150.00
75 Members $16.67 $106.67
100 Members $15.00 $85.00
150 Members $13.33 $63.33
* Extra costs per member could include things like office supplies or paper products for potlucks.
It is very tempting at the beginning to charge very low membership dues because the expenses are so low when members do everything. Be careful not to set dues too low. It is VERY difficult to raise them later and there are always expenses that you haven’t anticipated.
As you can see from the table, adding paid staff takes real money and that means fund raising. If you raise funds, you’ll probably want to incorporate as a non-profit entity (a.k.a. 501(c)(3)) so donors can get a tax deduction for their contribution. We have a book of fund raising event ideas that is specifically geared towards Time Banks. We also have Time Banks grant writing book that contains “best of” paragraphs from many past Time Banks grants. Both books are available from TBUSA for $50 each (they are also included with Affiliate Membership).
Fund raising can and should be fun. This is especially true for Time Banks because their fund raising events serve a dual purpose of “raising community” as they raise funds. For it to be fun, the fund raising coordinator must be a coordinator not just a good asker. More on this in the fund raising books…
As these greater aspirations manifest, email or call us at TimeBanks USA and we’ll help you in taking those next steps. We have training classes and a network of consultants to help you through the next level of complexity. Remember you can lower the cost of a paid coordinator by sharing the cost among several neighborhood Time Banks.