Time is money

And to these Mainers, that’s not just an expression

By Amrita Bruce

AUDA MAIN: keeping tabs on the time dollar bank located on Munjoy Hill.

So you’ve been dying to get a massage but haven’t had the spare 50 dollars it usually costs for a session. Maybe you’re new to the United States, and to Portland. You barely speak English, say, and you don’t know a single person and you don’t know where to start meeting them. Certainly, your car needs an oil change and Sears Auto is backed up and can’t do it until after your planned road trip. Your mother-in-law is coming to visit and you don’t know how you are going to get the house cleaned in time, let alone do the laundry and accommodate her weirdo macrobiotic diet. You want to learn African drumming but the yellow pages doesn’t list anything under “African.”

So many things to do, so little time. Just about everybody can sympathize.

When the conventional economy (or conventional economics) can’t provide an answer to that age-old problem, Portlanders are turning to something akin to the barter economy we once ruled out as inefficient — right around the time everyone was saying Adam Smith was so smart —in the form of the Maine Time Dollar Network (MTDN).

Initially criticized by the media as a ridiculous use of the start-up grant money it took to begin MTDN in 1998, the organization and the community around it is now considered to be a pioneer amongst time-dollar models across the country. Of the 200 odd time-dollar projects nationwide, Maine has been the first to create a network that is universal in the demographics of its members, and involves people from nearly every kind of vocation.

Last year alone, MTDN members traded 8000 hours of services with each other. In other US cities, time-dollar networks have generally been restricted to economically disadvantaged communities such as the populations of youth detention centers or assisted-living homes. The success of the Maine Time Dollar model has earned kudos from those prominent in the international movement, and, consequently, Portland’s MTDN director Auda Main (last name unrelated to the cause she supports) has been invited to be the keynote speaker at an international Time Dollar Congress in Birmingham, England this fall.

“Maine is an extraordinary example of the neighbor-to-neighbor time-dollar model,” says D.C.-based Edgar S. Cahn, the founder of the original time-dollar concept and the Time Dollar Institute that pushes the idea on the national scene. “We hold it up as a beacon to other groups who are trying to build the same sense of community.” There are broadly two time-dollar models that Cahn conceptualized in his books Time Dollars (Family Resources Coalition, 1998) and No More Throw Away People (Essential Information, 2000).

The first is the co-production model: a system of goods and services exchanged on a small scale in groups, such as senior or juvenile justice communities. The second is the neighbor-to-neighbor model: an attempt to rebuild community and exchange services among members of a larger, more diverse community.

“There’s more of the neighbor-to-neighbor genre in England,” says Cahn. “Because of [World War 2], people remember what it was like to pull together. Plus, the Blair government is investing in re-generating community. In the United States, government funding is easier to obtain for specialized projects [the co-production model] such as a time-dollar program in a senior community. But Maine has a successful neighbor-to-neighbor model and they’re even having Auda talk about it in England, which is pretty nifty.”

The success of Maine’s neighbor-to-neighbor time-dollar model is attributed in equal parts to the generous funding it received and the community feeling that already exists in the area. “I think you have a tradition in New England of town-hall democracy and of the village as a polity” says Cahn. The Time Dollar Network came to Maine in 1998, when Richard Rockefeller, a physician and philanthropist, put together a board of interested people and invested the core funding required to start up the Maine Time Dollar Network. But the initiative would not have taken off it weren’t for the resounding response from Portlanders.

“The community has embraced time dollars and has been very supportive,” says Auda Main, citing in particular the willingness of organizations such as the Portland Symphony to trade their services for time dollars.

The Maine Time Dollar Network operates less like an organization than a state of mind, in which all work is equally valued. The concept is fairly simple. Membership is free. When you offer a service to a fellow member you are credited ten Maine time dollars per service hour. The member who used your service in turn is debited ten Maine Time Dollars. Each hour of work is worth ten Maine Time Dollars regardless of the type of work.

The Maine Time Dollar Network office, a one and a half room space on Munjoy Hill, keeps a log of everybody’s debits and credits through a computer system. The timekeeper software that keeps a log of people’s services was designed by a Maine resident, Kenneth Gordon. Cahn believes that the software is integral to the success of MTDN. In the past, neighborhoods were closer knit and people knew what they could expect from others. “How do you create trust in a neighborhood that is always in flux?” asks Cahn. “The key is memory. Gordon’s computer system, along with MTDN, creates the equivalent of neighborhood memory by making time-dollar matches and generating regular time-dollar statements.” MTDN also interviews and collects character and work references for all its members ensuring trustworthiness and quality work.

The Maine Time Dollar Network and its computer system served as an inspiration to an Englishman, Martin Simon, who attended the first international Time Dollar Congress in Maine in 1997. Simon returned to England and began using a modified version of Gordon’s timekeeper software to form a time-dollar association called “Fair Shares” (being British they had to drop the offending “dollar” from the name of the organization).

Today, according to Cahn, the British government is proposing a quarter of a million pounds as an investment in a nationwide time-dollar — er, time-pound? — network. In addition, the London-based think tank New Economic Foundation will be building a time bank in London to allow people to earn time credits. In the next three years, the program is expected to evolve into a web-based network of up to 40 time banks in the London area alone.

The Brits modeled their system on the MTDN primarily because of its egalitarian approach that includes people from varied income levels who offer a range of services. From snow shoveling to sculpting lessons, from small business consulting to sound healing, MTDN services run the gamut from the esoteric (reiki energy healing, origami lessons, polarity therapy) to the practical (house cleaning, lawn-mowing, laundry) to the absurd (competitive scrabble tutoring). “We always have new people who want to join who claim they have no skills,” says Auda Main, “but we talk for half an hour, I tell them about the other services provided and, sure enough, they always find things they can do.”

If you’re not in a time-dollar state of mind, you might think it unfair that an acupuncturist who has presumably trained for several years earns the same amount as a dog walker. However, most of Portland’s 300-plus Maine Time Dollar members appreciate the equal pay approach.

“I like the concept of everyone having equal value and everyone’s time being equal,” says Katherine Lovejoy, LMT, a massage therapist. Lovejoy is a professional masseuse with a private practice. She usually charges $50 a session. But MTDN members are only charged two credits, or 20 Maine Time Dollars for the two-hour service. “I do put a limit on the number of time-dollar sessions I do per week,” says Lovejoy, “but I’ll see anyone who’s in pain even if I’m done with my MTD quota for the week.”

The time-dollar concept uses a novel cost-benefit analysis that includes “invisible” benefits such as psychological satisfaction, happiness, and self-esteem. “It feels good to empower people to find themselves,” says Kat Landry a Reiki energy healer and psychic who has over a page-long wait-list of MTDN members who want her services. “I enjoy it so much.” She does admit, however, that she’s “really feeling a time shortage.”

The cost-benefit analysis has not convinced everyone, and Auda Main does recollect one case of an accountant who could not see why joining the MTDN might help him. “MTDN wasn’t apparently beneficial to me from the get-go,” says John Charlesbois, an acupuncturist and Chinese herbologist who practices at Jade Trade, on Munjoy Hill, a few doors down from the MTDN office. “But if you give it time it becomes apparent that [MTDN] is better than barter because it’s not trade for trade, and better than charity because it allows people to think about what they can contribute to the community.” Charlesbois reserves ten acupuncture slots per month for MTDN customers and has used his time dollars for a Feng Shui consultation and for Kayaking lessons.

In 1996, when Cahn was trying to persuade people of the value of his idea, his primary argument was that the real wealth of a nation was not its money but the time of the people and their willingness to use that time in service. Cahn’s book Time Dollars argues that time spent investing in the community is not rewarded. In other words, it doesn’t really pay (literally speaking) to help the kid next door with his homework or to cook a meal for a sick neighbor. And because, as a people, Americans are so focused on remuneration, we start to miss out on community. Societies that are more community oriented, such as those in Asia or Africa, are not facing this problem to the same degree.

Local artist and drawing teacher Nancy Sanchez joined Maine Time Dollars for the very reasons that Cahn describes. “I’d always been interested in the idea of barter systems,” she says. “I support bio-regionalism . . . Bio-regionalism means that culture and trade develop from the resources of the place you live in instead of through a governing authority, as it has in Western society”. A talented artist, like many other MTDN members, Sanchez is equally comfortable with all the services she offers: house painting, mending and alteration, gardening, and portrait drawing. She has used MTDN for notary and plumbing services. She’s also used time-dollars to purchase books and a toaster oven at the Time Dollar Yard Sale where virtual time dollars are used to buy material goods. Sanchez prefers to deal with traded services than with money. “Money is so loaded culturally,” she says. “It gets in the way of people and interrupts the connections that Maine Time Dollars is about. At MTDN, regardless of who you are or what you do, your time is equally valued.”

Cahn’s theory is that society’s need for money is a result of the decline of the community economy. We now pay for services that we used to receive as a natural process from the community. Johnny’s aunt doesn’t have time to tutor him anymore, say, and his mother has to spring the cash to pay for a tutor. Or maybe Eric has substituted weekly visits to his grandparents with the ubiquitous Nintendo and his grandma has hired a “companion.”

“It takes a long stretch of the imagination to envision a day, in America, when people considered community norms a legitimate check on the profit-making urge,” writes Cahn. “[The] chief engine of change, [was the] corporation. Dealings based on locality and trust gave way to dealings governed solely by the mass market . . . We [Americans] no longer provide care, we buy it.”

Many MTDN members find in the time-dollar community the nostalgia of a time gone by. “Its kind of like the old days . . . you do something nice for somebody and somebody else does something nice for you,” says Therese Blay, a French woman in her fifties. Blay has cooked meals for other MTDN members and pet-sat for a member’s diabetic cat.

“I like the alternative economic system,” says Edna Beers, a retired social worker in her late sixties. “I came from a tiny village and the Maine Time Dollars Network has that sense about it — people caring for each other and giving each other a hand.” In the past, Beers has used her time dollars to treat her friends to a Portland Symphony performance, and now she’s saving her credits to apply to house-moving helpers when she relocates to Brunswick later this year.

Service exchange aside, many MTDN members say the concept has helped them make friends in the community. “I became really good friends with a woman, Betty, who takes guitar lessons from me through MTDN,” says Michael Danahy. “She’s in her fifties and I’m thirty-eight; we wouldn’t have met under ordinary circumstances.” Particularly for those new to the community, MTDN has served as a introduction to the neighborhood.

“Where I grew up, we always volunteered to help people,” says Esafo Kulibali who moved to Maine from his homeland, the Ivory Coast in Africa. “Here people are busy and they don’t seem to have that much time. So I’m glad to be a member of MTDN where people have time for you.” Kulibali offers translation services in English and French and has helped people who were moving houses or who needed cleaning or handiwork services. MTDN runs monthly potluck dinners where new members can meet others in the community. The periodic yard sales that they organize also serve as a social forum while providing members with the opportunity to use their credit hours to buy goods.

Although MTDN has pioneered the neighbor-to-neighbor time-dollar model, the organization has also worked on significant co-production projects in sub-communities in Portland. Among those that stand out is the Inter-Generational Computer Literacy Project, whose goal is to create greater access to technology for seniors and young people in the Greater Portland area while building relationships between these two groups.

“You may have heard the African saying ‘it takes a village to raise a child’ says Cahn, “well the time-dollar network is trying to grow that village.”

Amrita Narayanan Bruce can be reached at amritabruce@yahoo.com