We build community that values people over profit.

 

Timebanking is the practice of counting people's hours of labor (work) as a type of currency. Members in a timebank simply agree to help each other out when possible and as needed. Every hour of help provided is calculated as an hour of community service work and therefore earns the provider one unit in the timebank. All hours earned are valued equally, regardless of the help provided. Our currency units are typically referred to as "hours" or "credits" by our members.

 

Timebanking 101: 1 hour of help = 1 currency unit earned

 

Timebanking offers an innovative way for people to connect and create a local sharing community that is founded on a spirit of abundance and trust. Our community continues to grow, as members invite coworkers, family, friends, and neighbors to share their time, skills, and resources with others. Nonprofit organizations and local businesses have also discovered creative ways to plug in and support us. Over the years, these diverse efforts have evolved into a more unified community-building grassroots initiative. We now have well over 200 members participating in the timebank.

 

Our motto for sustainable growth: "No money, no problems."

 

Membership in our timebank is (and will always) be money-free. Membership is open and inclusive to residents in the Tallahassee area; it is not restricted by age, nationality, ethnicity, race, religion, ability, citizenship, sex/sexual orientation, gender/gender orientation, political orientation, personality type, musical preferences, etc. A diversity of perspectives, tools, talents, approaches, skills, resources, abilities, expertise, and experiences are essential ingredients to the long term, sustainable success of a local sharing economy, so we strive to preserve and nurture diversity.

 

We equally strive to develop and practice our conflict-resolution skills to preserve our nonviolent community. Timebankers have facilitated discussions and trainings on nonviolent communication (NVC) and conflict resolution for our members, as well as local activists groups and interested parties. For more information on the NVC process, see our Learn More section.

 

More on how timebanking works.

Members can share requests for help based on whatever unmet needs they experience. Some typical examples include requests for help with child care and tutoring, elderly care, pet care, home repair and construction project assistance, gardening and lawn care assistance, food preparation, event planning, website design, resume building, transportation assistance, help with running errands like groceries and laundry, heavy lifting, and so much more. At the same time, members can also share offers to help based on their own free time (availability) capabilities, skills, talents, and resources.

 

Networking among members happens in many different ways.

 

Examples include:

• By meeting other members at any of our community events (e.g. member potlucks and meal shares, free market days, tool-sharing and skill-sharing workshops, new member orientations & workshops, community service projects, disaster & emergency relief assistance initiatives, social events)

• By announcing a new request for help or offer to help online through your online (time)banking account in our Tallahassee hOurworld website

• By posting a new request for help or offer to help online through our Facebook group

 

Active members can then proactively search for opportunities to connect presently unmet needs (requests) with presently underutilized resources (offers). In other words, active members are pooling and sharing their time, skills, talents, resources, and creative problem solving capabilities to meet the immediate needs of anyone requesting help in our community as best we can (witness: the power of diversity in action). Members use the hours they have accumulated through helping members in the past to give as gifts to the members who are helping them out now or in the future.

 

Members share a "pay-it-forward" attitude.

Many of our members are simply seeking opportunities to help build and strengthen our local community; they often give their excess units as gifts to other members who may be needing to request help. In other words, our "wealthy" members are among the first to gift from their abundance of wealth to the newcomers in our economic system. Money system anxieties about debt slowly release their grip on the imagination of new members as they start to understand, trust, and embrace the practice. What remains is what arguably has been there all along: our human drive to reciprocate what has been done for us.

 

Our growing capacity to assist families burdened by unmet economic needs stems from member's generosity of attention, time, kindness, trust, passion, care, and compassion for others. Every hour of help exchanged in a timebank demonstrates the capacity of individuals to freely and nonviolently coordinate and create innovative solutions to complex economic and social problems.

 

What steps do I take to join?

• First things first, fill out our online membership application 
• Once approved, you gain access to establish a personal online (time)banking account. You can then do the following:
• Upload a profile photo, introduce yourself in the bio section
• List tools or other useful stuff you are happy to lend to others (if any) in the bio section 
• Check off any skills, talents, and abilities you are happy to share from our drop down lists
• Review your time bank account statement of transactions
• Announce any new offers to help or requests for help
• Explore other members’ offers and requests 
• Record the number of hours of help you provide to, and receive from, other members
• Peruse the email update we send out at the start of each week (it announces new members, offers, or requests posted to our website in the previous week) 
• Check back for new offers and requests throughout the week by visiting the website
• Learn about timebank events by email or by following the Tallahassee Time Bank on Facebook or by joining the Facebook group

Note: Thanks to the ingenuity and vision of hOurworld open source software engineers, we can now also download the hOurworld mobile app for free to our smart phone devices and record our timebanking transactions on the go. Learn more about hOurworld and it's expanding international network of neighbors helping neighbors (and download the app).