SPIRITUAL CURRENCY Building a New Economy with Volunteer Credits Placed in the public domain December 1983 by Derek Brownlee derekb@bslnet.com --------------------------- CONTENTS SC1 INTRODUCTION spiritual currency - introduction volunteer credit systems trouble with money what is a win-win economy? creating a win-win economy spiritual currency SC2 DEVELOPING VOLUNTEER CREDITS: FIRST STEPS volunteer credit options volunteer credit inventory human capital enhancing the value of VH donors and voting shares SC3 SPENDING CREDITS: TIME DOLLARS Time Dollars should volunteers be allowed to spend their credits? should clients earn credits? some agency worries about spendable credits difference between barter and volunteer credits SC4 INVESTING CREDITS IN ORGANIZATIONS volunteer hours as investments setting volunteer hours free volunteer credit transfers accepting credit transfers who owns volunteer credits? SC5 COMMUNITY SERVICE REQUIREMENTS spending volunteer credits on health, education and welfare government and community service requirements non-profits and community service requirements community service credits reimbursed by the government agency services reimbursed by the government safeguards against corruption community service and volunteer hours SC6 THE FUTURE OF VOLUNTEER CREDITS volunteer information service nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and global aid self-help in the third world: the last shall be first can the win-win economy replace the rule of violence? a voluntary system volunteer credits must work in the present ========================================================================= SC1 INTRODUCTION spiritual currency - introduction volunteer credit systems trouble with money what is a win-win economy? creating a win-win economy spiritual currency SPIRITUAL CURRENCY - INTRODUCTION The volunteer hours recorded by many agencies are an undeveloped resource. They can be developed using win-win principles to bring new benefits to volunteers, agencies and the community served. We need to develop volunteer hours as a new kind of currency to address the growing needs left unmet by the money economy. Government agencies at all levels are starting to look at community service schemes to make ends meet, but they can't afford to create and supervise the service jobs. This is an opportunity for the non-profit sector. "Spiritual Currency" describes how to develop volunteer credit systems from the bottom up, so that community values are served first, and validated community service credits are generated for reimbursement by government and other funding sources. Volunteer credits are much more than a means of attracting funding. They are a prototype of win-win currency, held jointly by volunteers and agencies, and created at the grassroots to carry the shared values of those involved. These are win-win values, closely identified with spiritual values, or, for the secularly inclined, values of cooperation, mutual aid and personal development which lead to general abundance. If we can put these spiritual or win-win values into our volunteer credit system, not only will they help our community directly, but the money will follow. Furthermore, such a system functioning on the local level can be a model for creating a win-win economy throughout the world. VOLUNTEER CREDIT SYSTEMS To develop volunteer hours (VH) we will look at them as win-win currency, bringing credit to both the volunteers and the organization that records them. We will also be looking at VH as win-win capital, accumulating over the years as the total contribution made by each volunteer and each organization to the community. Another example of win-win currency is academic credits. Academic credits are earned by the student, are kept in the records of the school, and measure the performance of the teacher and school as well as the student. They accumulate towards a degree, a kind of academic capital which the graduate keeps for life. If the schools agree, a student can transfer credits from one college to another, and we will be looking at this kind of mobility for volunteer hours. In fact, convertibility will be a way of validating VH as currency and maintaining standards for the organizations that produced them. Bringing this kind of rigor to volunteer hours may qualify them as community service credits which can be exchanged for government benefits. And VH that are standardized and mobile can act as an alternative currency, tying together non-profit and voluntary groups into a win-win economy. VH can help to run a volunteer information network, bringing the wealth of information to those who need it most. Those in the volunteer economy need never be information-poor. Vice President Albert Gore has promised us an "information superhighway," but looks to the non-profits to provide the grass-roots delivery systems. We will be looking at VH as investments that volunteers can make in the causes they support; VH as voting shares in member-run groups; VH as insurance for help in time of need; VH for donors to give them a lifelong interest in the volunteer economy; VH as the basis for other win-win currencies... This vision takes us far beyond our concept of volunteer hours today, when, if the hours are recorded at all, they may perhaps be worth some matching funds for the agency and an awards luncheon for the volunteers. Their full potential remains unknown and undeveloped. TROUBLE WITH MONEY Currency is whatever is in current use as a medium of exchange. Oh, how temporary that sounds! Money sounds more solid and stable -- at least until we look at it closely -- and we shall use the word money for traditional win-lose currency. Win-win currency stretches the definition of currency. Credit might be a more accurate word. Whereas money comes from on high and is passed around anonymously, win-win credits are created at the grassroots by two parties who have both their names on them. Circulation and exchange are much more limited. But the idea of currency can help us understand these strange new critters. And we'd better, because money is in trouble. It needs help. It's not doing its job. It can't keep up with the changing times. It can't do everything and it needs some other kind of currency to take some of the load, to fill in where money doesn't reach. We still love money. It's doing remarkably well, considering that all the value has been taken out of it, it's no longer backed by precious metals, and all that's left is magic. Pure faith. Our belief in each dollar keeps it going. And that dollar tends to go to the rich. There's not enough money for the poor, since the value of money rests on scarcity. Money is created at the top of society and trickles down only so far. The creation of money and credit is an unearned bonanza for rich banks and financiers, not for the people who need it most. There's a need for some kind of currency and credit creation at the bottom of society to fill this money void. Meanwhile the money economy is busy painting itself into a corner, thanks to automation. Computers make products cheap and workers redundant. The results: lower prices and less spending money. The money economy is in danger of contraction, a process that could lead to monetary collapse. Faced with this danger, the money economy is struggling to find new ways to expand. The demand is there, from the growing needs of the poor. Now if only the poor had some kind of currency... Requiring community service credits in exchange for government support is a move in the right direction. Beyond that we'd like to see these credits acquire value in their own right and trade directly with the money economy. Community service requirements can give volunteer hours the boost they need to get established, but the point is not just to distribute aid more efficiently. The goal is to build a new economy with these volunteer hours so that aid will no longer be necessary. WHAT IS A WIN-WIN ECONOMY? The economy started out from a Greek word meaning good housekeeping, and expanded into the complex system of inputs and outputs, mediated by money, that holds us in thrall today. Economics has generally been applied to scarce resources -- land, labor and capital -- following the material win-lose model, which says if I have something, you don't. Win-win economics is possible when we deal in non-material values, typically the things money can't buy. A win-win transaction might be having a conversation or playing together. Both sides gain in the process. In addition, they build up friendship or informal credit with each other, a kind of win-win capital. Back before money, the distribution of work and rewards depended on friendships and informal credit, as well as kinship and brute force. Today, in the worlds of business and politics, this informal economy continues to thrive. Business and politics are communities of a sort, but those of us who deal only in money find our community ties broken. That is one reason we may turn to volunteering: to recover the traditional non-monetary relationships and sense of community. Win-win economics is not entirely new. It's based on something old and familiar. In a sense, we understand it already. And it's from this traditional base that we will build something new and powerful, leap-frogging over money to provide a higher order economy for the next millennium. CREATING A WIN-WIN ECONOMY The traditional informal economy of human relations has no currency, and we like it that way. Why would we need a win-win currency? We need a win-win currency to extend our economy beyond the people we know and to build a win-win economy that can play a part in running the world. We don't need a currency to relate to our friends, but we will need one to relate to institutions and the wider world. And we find that both the institutions and the currency of a win-win economy already exist. Which institutions currently address those needs neglected by the money economy? These are the non-profit agencies, churches, charities, voluntary groups and government services. The non-profit economy is already in place. It's a local and global network, with offices, staff, funding and a major production and delivery system of goods and services. It's already focused on the areas left out of the money economy, both the people without money and the values ignored by the economy. And it already generates volunteer hours in substantial quantities in every community. The elements of a win-win economy already exist. Our thinking isn't there. . .yet. It's an adventure in consciousness to create a win-win currency, and each chapter will unfold a new perspective. Our values and beliefs form much of the subject matter, for these are more important components of a currency than accounting techniques. So this is the first product of the win-win economy: learning something new and transformative. For everyone, the win-win economy starts with education. Before any change occurs in the world, a change occurs inside. SPIRITUAL CURRENCY What is spiritual currency? The term catches the imagination. It suggests something that embodies higher values and win-win principles. it invokes fantasies of a world run on those higher values, producing peace and abundance for all. Can we create a spiritual currency? The question rightly points at us. We must provide the values for such a currency, or get them from our spiritual source. It's our job, our responsibility, to create such a currency. And that's a radical idea, to create our own currency. We are accustomed to look outside for money, and accept whatever values it represents. What is spiritual currency? Is it the same as win-win currency? What do the participants in a win-win transaction gain? Where does it come from? These are vital topics for discussion. The details of the wins will vary, of course, but the participants usually feel good, and gain some energy from the transaction that is called by the same name in both religious and secular traditions: spirit. Spirit has adjectives "spirited" and "spiritual". The secular "spirited" is a simple observation of energy appearing and is uncontroversial. "Spiritual" refers to the unobserved source and mechanism of spirit and causes endless argument. Volunteers work for both spiritual and secular purposes. No particular belief system is required, and the volunteer ethic and the win-win principle are held in universal high regard. Volunteer hours should prove to be a worthy medium for those who wish to manifest spiritual principles on earth, as well as for those who just want to make the world work. SC2 DEVELOPING VOLUNTEER CREDITS: FIRST STEPS volunteer credit options volunteer credit inventory human capital enhancing the value of volunteer hours donors and voting shares VOLUNTEER CREDIT OPTIONS Volunteer credit systems can be developed in stages. Each organization can decide which options to adopt at its own pace, and may even test out options on a project or subprogram. It is important to secure the agreement of everyone involved before making changes. Thus education becomes the first stage, with workshops and discussions for volunteers and administrators on the principles involved, and how to implement them in the organization's particular case. Education takes time. Minds don't change in a hurry, and the win-win potential of volunteer credits takes a while to grasp. Developing volunteer credits is an evolutionary process, studying and applying each step in turn while getting a better view of the goal where these steps are leading. The first stage is looking at what exists, the present and past contributions of volunteer hours. These can be given new recognition and value, knowing what they can become, and will become a factor in publicity and motivation. Next comes the experimental stage, where specific options are tested out on a new project or program. These options will include: clients earning credits; volunteers spending credits; credit transfers and networking with other agencies; voting credits; credit for donors; community service requirements. The experimental stage may start with one organization but will develop as a cooperative project community-wide, where different groups test different options, interact with the networking options, and learn from each other which options work. Then there is a consolidation stage where groups extend their options, leading to a commitment stage where they make all their credits transferable, and adopt businesslike accounting procedures for volunteer hours. There are costs and benefits at each stage, which each group can evaluate and decide how far to go and how fast, where to stop and what the future potential may be. VOLUNTEER CREDIT INVENTORY Today many organizations put their records of volunteer hours to use as one measure of the group's contribution to the community, for the purpose of securing funding and facilities. Thus VH records are already a factor in the non-profit economy, and actually generate income. Some organizations are leveraging their volunteer hours to get grants. Some say their volunteers are worth $10 an hour for matching funds. These are the beginnings of viewing volunteer hours as an economic resource and tradable currency. It's a view still rooted in the money world, valuing volunteer hours in terms of money. We have yet to tap the win-win values that are potential in volunteer hours. But that's OK. The fundraising value of volunteer hours is an essential part of the cost-benefit picture, and will serve to lift VH from their present obscurity and pay for their early development. If VH can generate income, they can also be viewed as capital. The agency can claim, "23,000 volunteer hours contributed to the community since 1979." The volunteers will also enjoy seeing their individual totals. To produce these numbers, the organization must conduct a volunteer credit inventory. This can be done by following the records back as far as they go, and then asking the volunteers and administrators to fill in the gaps. This simple first step will demonstrate how each such step adds value to VH. The agency gains an aditional statistic for fundraising. The volunteers gain an additional measure of recognition. The volunteers will feel the hours they log are more valuable. That is a motivation to work more hours or stay with a job rather than quitting. And more VH means more funding. The value of volunteer hours can also be enhanced by assertion -- by saying that they are worth more than previously thought. Part of this is the promise that VH will be developed to produce future benefits. And part of it is recognizing the intrinsic nature of volunteer hours and volunteers as embodying a higher value system and worthy of our attention and regard. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- HUMAN CAPITAL If we value volunteer hours, we value the volunteers, we value people. We value people who serve. These people become the source of the values, the creators of the currency. There is no shortage of this currency. Anybody can create it by working an hour. Volunteer work, by definition, is not done for reward. The volunteer instead gets credit. This credit builds up and represents the value of the volunteer in the community. Volunteer credits make people the source and repository of value. The credits accumulate as human capital. In contrast, money values machine capital. As machines replace people, the machines earn the money and the people have none. Money is becoming an alien value, dedicated to keeping the machines alive. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- ENHANCING THE VALUE OF VOLUNTEER HOURS If a group completes a volunteer credit inventory, it can share the results with its volunteers, showing each individual's accumulated credit. This can be followed by regular statements to all active volunteers, showing how many VH they earned in the month and how their totals have grown. Earned? That's a new concept for volunteers. It implies that VH are some kind of permanent credit or currency that the volunteer now owns, and that this accounting entry is somehow equivalent to the hours that were worked. The regular statements reinforce this idea over the months. Previous totals are preserved and new hours added to them. The statements look like bank statements, making VH look even more like money. The volunteer can now feel ownership of the credits, see them mounting up, feel good about them, feel good as a person, being worth that much. It's like a bank account, maybe the first for someone who's young and unemployed. It introduces a sense of time and progress. And all this before adding any explicit value whatsoever to the credits. It is a leap of consciousness for volunteers to see their hours as not disappearing into the ether, but preserved in these accounts. The credits even have the same name: volunteer hours. The volunteer will tend to give these symbolic VH the value that went into the original hours. This is a crucial shift, a major input of value to VH. It doesn't come from the agency or any incentives or uses for VH, but from the volunteers themselves. If future uses are promised, this may facilitate the process. But the principal early input of value to VH can come from the volunteers themselves, identifying their credits with the energy and ideals that went into them. It may seem illogical to give value to a symbolic quantity. But we do it every day with our dollars. DONORS AND VOTING SHARES Now we get to some controversial uses for volunteer hours, which each group can debate whether to adopt. One is whether to give VH credit to donors. Volunteers will say, no way, they didn't work any hours. But if the rate is set very high, say $50 or $100 an hour, the volunteers may feel pretty good about it. They may not have much earning power in the money economy, but in the volunteer economy their hours are worth $50 or $100. This sets the tone for VH, as being somehow more valuable than ordinary commercial hours. As we develop volunteer hours as a win-win currency, we may find that this is so. Why should donors pay so much for VH? Well, they were going to donate anyway. The rate doesn't matter to them. The volunteer hours are just a bonus. But they're more than that. Donors will get a statement at least once a year showing their VH balance, and they may be encouraged to volunteer. If VH are treated as voting shares it gives donors a stake in the organization. And donors will also have access to the future uses of VH that may be developed. Offering VH to donors is a fundraising incentive and it involves donors in this experimental new value system, as well as giving them a continuing interest in the groups they assist. VH as voting shares is an option that may suit some groups. It will encourage members to show up to meetings, to exercise their power. It recognizes the workers in the group and gives due weight to seniority, to the people who have accumulated credits over many years. Not that long- established groups would adopt such a radical change of governance. This is more likely to appeal to new groups starting from scratch. But all groups should consider expanding their definition of volunteer hours. Officers and others who show up for business meetings should get credit for their time. Telephone time and travel time should count. If we're creating a new currency, let's create as much as we can. SC3 SPENDING CREDITS: TIME DOLLARS Time Dollars should volunteers be allowed to spend their credits? should clients earn credits? some agency worries about spendable credits difference between barter and volunteer credits TIME DOLLARS Time Dollars, also known as service credits, are used to account for volunteer hours in a number of seniors' programs around the country. A Time Dollar is earned for one hour of volunteer work, and can be spent on one hour of volunteer service. While most volunteers say they would work without them, the Time Dollars have some remarkable dynamics in creating peer networks and building community. And the volunteer dropout rate has been cut dramatically. Time Dollars are a perennial good news story and are detailed in the book TIME DOLLARS by Edgar Cahn and Jonathan Rowe (Rodale Press 1992). The book describes the success of a three-year experiment in Miami, Boston, Brooklyn and San Francisco, paid for by a $1.2 million grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. With this startup help, the experiment continues, because participants hope to spend their Time Dollars when they need help someday. The book ends with how-to instructions for starting a Time Dollars project, and offers materials for under $100 that include a Time Dollars accounting program for IBM-type computers. The idea is for seniors to volunteer while they are able, and provide home help, companionship and transportation to those less able. They earn Time Dollars which they can spend on volunteer services when they need them. The principle is mutual aid, though in practice volunteers rarely spend any of their credits. "...the new money functions a little like the pat on the back that people used to get in stable neighborhood settings, where their good deeds became part of a collective memory that would one day return in the form of kindness to themselves. Strange as it may sound, the computer records are a part of this effect; matching givers and recipients and recording the hours spent and earned, the records serve to replicate that social memory in a modern urban setting..." p.12, TIME DOLLARS. Time Dollars systems do not replace existing volunteer programs, which may feel threatened. Time Dollars are introduced to meet specific needs, usually home care of the elderly, and start with a limited range of services that can be adequately covered. They are usually sponsored by a non-profit agency but could be run by businesses by and for their employees. There is a feeling of pioneering a new economy, one that has tremendous potential for advance. And those involved are self-selected to have such moral qualities as caring, trustworthiness and idealism. They form a culture and a community that ends the fear and isolation of the urban jungle. SHOULD VOLUNTEERS BE ALLOWED TO SPEND THEIR CREDITS? The Time Dollars system was designed for seniors for mutual aid. Volunteers provide elder care and accumulate credits as a kind of insurance against the time when they might be sick or incapacitated. The idea is to spend the credits as needed on volunteer services. That idea doesn't hold water. Service is given on the basis of need, not on the ability to pay. The value of the credits is purely psychological. Time Dollars members can feel they've earned their care when they need it. The ability to pay from their Time Dollars account gives them pride that they don't have to beg for charity. Meanwhile, they're spending only about 1% of the credits they earn. A more common transaction is to give their Time Dollars to someone who's receiving care. This again is purely symbolic, since the recipient would receive care anyway. In fact, the whole Time Dollars economy is symbolic. Yet it transforms volunteer attitudes and dedication. It produces more hours worked and a lower dropout rate. Volunteers value their credits with values they provide themselves. They have been given ownership of their credits and as a result these credits have acquired new value. Some lessons emerge from the experience of Time Dollars: 1. The value of the currency is driven by psychology, not economics. 2. Ownership in itself adds value to volunteer credits. 3. Spending is not what it seems. SHOULD CLIENTS EARN CREDITS? The Time Dollars experiment is rich in lessons, and one of them is the value of giving those receiving care the opportunity to earn volunteer hours. They may not be able to do much, but talking to people on the phone is valuable. So is helping themselves in small ways, since this may save volunteer hours or professional care. Those receiving care wish to reciprocate, and in the Time Dollars system they do, getting involved in the service network. They have a right to work in the Time Dollars economy, and plenty of time on their hands. They cease to be passive recipients, and this has good effects on their health, insurance companies have noticed. One HMO accepts 25% of its insurance premium in Time Dollars. This is a remarkable discovery, containing not one but several lessons. First, everybody's time is valuable in the volunteer economy, even those we would normally write off as incapacitated. Their work can be productive even in money terms, reducing the drain in taxes and insurance premiums on everybody. Second, it took a new currency system to uncover the value of this work, where the money economy does not reach. Third, the volunteer hour appears to be a universal standard, the same for everybody regardless of ability, in marked contrast to the way the money economy values people's time. Fourth, if everybody is equal in the volunteer economy, this agrees with the spiritual, ethical and populist beliefs in equality as an essential principle of any future for our world. And there's a practical result of having clients earn credits. They spend them. At last we have some spending in the volunteer economy. And we have established a new role, a new population in the volunteer economy who earn and spend credits without accumulating any. This is the model for the proposed community service credits which are turned in for government support and services. SOME AGENCY WORRIES ABOUT SPENDABLE CREDITS Organizations which issue Time Dollars have expressed concern about the balances that build up in volunteers' accounts. Will the agencies have to make good on these credits and provide service some day? Are the credits liabilities to the organization? And if Time Dollars are issued by a network of agencies, must each organization be prepared to make good on Time Dollars issued by all the other agencies? These concerns come from win-lose thinking and accounting, where if Time Dollars are an asset to the volunteers, they must be a liability or debt for the agency. However, we will find that volunteer hours are a genuine win-win currency, an asset or credit to both sides. Another concern is that volunteers should not work for reward, and spendable credits are a type of reward. In practice the volunteers answer this concern by choosing to save most of their Time Dollars rather than spend them. And that answers the other worry, that agencies might have to make good on all these credits. In practice, Time Dollars produce an increase in volunteering with very little increase in demand for services, so the agencies come out ahead. Even when an issuer of Time Dollars goes out of existence, the Time Dollars persist, and the records are easily passed on to another group. The value of the credits is not backed by any institutional guarantee, but by the network of trust and obligation built up by the program. The Time Dollars remain valid as a reflection of the real economy of service that members have created. However, there is a valid concern about some groups issuing Time Dollars to excess, which other groups have to make good on. The Time Dollars system, when it is expanded beyond a single organization, tends to lose organizational control of its credits. Organizations are no longer responsible for the Time Dollars they issue. When we come to network volunteer hours, we will distinguish the VH system from the Time Dollars system by retaining organizational responsibility and control. The last big concern about spendable credits is, are they taxable? So far the IRS has ruled service credits tax-exempt because they are not "commercial in nature." We should be vigilant about maintaining this status, and not let VH or Time Dollars be confused with barter credits, which are taxable. Barter follows different principles than volunteering, and it is worth examining the similarities and differences. DIFFERENCE BETWEEN BARTER AND VOLUNTEER CREDITS Barter is the first thing people think of as an alternative to money, but it turns out to be a close relative -- so close in fact that the IRS claims it's taxable. And they're right. Barter in its primitive form is an equal exchange where we give something to get something, following the win-lose model. In its modern form barter credits are created, measured in dollars, and used as a medium of exchange in a business network, just like money. Barter does have its win-win aspects. Members of the barter network do create currency or mutual credit in limited amounts to start things off. However, in this they are copying what goes on in the higher reaches of the financial system, where money and credit are created by the powers that be. Behind the mutual credit of the barter network we may find an informal network of win-win relationships -- friendship credit or trust. In this way you could say that win-win relationships are an essential component of barter. Yet again we find such informal networks are common in normal business relationships and serve to facilitate trade. Barter makes more demands on our informal win-win economy than dealing in cash, and it also dramatizes the issues involved in currency creation. We can learn a lot from barter. But the barter credits themselves work a lot like commercial credit, and are treated the same for tax purposes. They are not a win-win currency. They cannot accumulate indefinitely. They are debts that have to be paid, and follow the win-lose accounting model. In the great divide between the things of God and Caesar, barter belongs to Caesar's world, volunteer credits to God. We live in both worlds, and just as volunteers use money, they can engage in barter also. As we've noted, we can learn a lot from barter. One thing we can learn from barter is that it's not easy to create our own currency. It takes a lot of trust, industry, integrity and stability. As individuals, we usually lack the credibility to issue a currency. That's why we look to institutions we can trust to issue volunteer credits. Institutions have more credibility. There is a moral attitude involved, that individuals don't deserve to create credits for their private purposes, and this privilege should belong only to worthy organizations performing a public service. SC4 INVESTING CREDITS IN ORGANIZATIONS volunteer hours as investments setting volunteer hours free volunteer credit transfers accepting credit transfers who owns volunteer credits? VOLUNTEER HOURS AS INVESTMENTS We've looked at ways to enhance the value of volunteer hours by letting them accumulate in volunteers' accounts, sending regular statements, and encouraging volunteers to look at their VH totals as something valuable that they have earned. We can encourage a sense of ownership even without offering spending options. In Time Dollars systems, volunteers tend to accumulate their credits anyway. So we shall look at VH primarily as capital, a kind of win-win capital which measures the lifetime contributions of both volunteers and agencies. This capital can bring benefits to volunteers in the form of awards, status or promotion. In a democratic group, it becomes voting power. And agencies can present their VH totals as fundraising statistics and a measure of their status in the community. Even though we just created this capital as a first stage in developing volunteer hours, it is real. Volunteers and agencies have over the years built up trust and goodwill, knowledge and connections, buildings and infrastructure. If we want to create a volunteer economy based on VH, we can start from the comfortable position of having substantial capital and no debts. Who owns this capital? We've been busy encouraging volunteers to feel they've earned their VH and that the totals in their accounts belong to them. However, normally they can't take their VH out. They have to leave them invested in the agency that keeps the accounts. In win-win capital, the win for the volunteers is the VH they own, the win for the agency is the VH that volunteers have invested in it. It is also the nature of win-win capital that it requires both parties to exist. VH do not exist unless they are on some agency's books. Volunteers cannot carry them away like cash, and this defines VH as a win-win currency that cannot be reduced to a win-lose trading currency. SETTING VOLUNTEER HOURS FREE The major innovation that turns volunteer hours into currency is to allow volunteers to transfer their VH from one agency to another. This requires two separate policy decisions for organizations. First, whether to allow volunteers to take VH out of their accounts. Second, whether to accept VH earned by volunteers elsewhere. Let's look at the first question, whether to set volunteer hours free. If volunteers are to truly own their credits they are entitled to move them. Otherwise their VH are investments in a frozen bank account. Setting volunteer hours free is easiest to do in the early stages of VH development, since volunteers have few choices of what to do with their VH, and will normally keep them where they earned them. From the agency's viewpoint, the value of VH is still undeveloped, so why not let the volunteers transfer them? VOLUNTEER CREDIT TRANSFERS To transfer VH, the volunteer needs the cooperation of the two agencies involved, rather like transferring academic credits from one school to another. If the issuing agency has set its VH free, there is no problem on that side. The second agency must agree to receive these credits, which it is not bound to do. But suppose it does. The transfer procedure is as follows: First agency: Transfer VH from the volunteer's account to an account opened for the second agency. Second agency: Issue the same number of VH to an account opened for the volunteer. This procedure does not require new accounting techniques or computers. Each agency still controls all its VH, which remain on its books and never actually move off the premises. All that happened was opening or adding to two accounts, which sounds like another win-win. It can be done with a phone call or a note from the receiving agency. ACCEPTING CREDIT TRANSFERS An agency does not have to accept all VH transfers. In doing so it accepts the incoming credits as equivalent to its own, and it may refuse if the issuer of the credits is unknown or in bad repute. Each group will develop its own list of acceptable credits, and this determines whose credits are good and how far they can travel, in a manner of speaking. The credits never actually leave home, but how far away will they find investors? After accepting some credits and issuing the volunteer its own VH in exchange, an agency is now recorded as the owner of the VH formerly belonging to the volunteer. Thus agencies will build up a portfolio of VH investments in different agencies, just as volunteers can. Both volunteers and organizations can choose where to invest their VH, and move them to those groups and projects they wish to support. An agency is free to reinvest the VH it just received from a volunteer in some other organization it likes better. But if many agencies are trying to get rid of the same issuer's VH they may not find anyone to accept them, and those VH are in danger of becoming non-convertible. In that case the issuer can make them good by converting them directly, accepting its VH back in exchange for good credits that it may own. If it runs out of acceptable credits then its VH are no longer convertible. These voluntary exchanges determine whose credits are good in the volunteer economy. They are good if they are accepted. Some may be accepted more widely than others. Apart from that, all volunteer hours are worth the same. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- WHO OWNS VOLUNTEER CREDITS? The volunteer works the hours. But they aren't credits until the agency records them. They are recorded in the agency's accounts under the volunteer's name, but it is the agency's name that makes the VH acceptable in the volunteer economy. The volunteer owns the credits, and the agency is a bank, holding the VH on deposit. The volunteer may in some cases have additional ownership privileges such as voting rights. If the VH are convertible, acceptable for exchange with those of other organizations, volunteers may reinvest them in those other organizations. Agencies will also come to own VH from these exchanges, and they too may reinvest them. Thus organizations may own and transfer VH as well as volunteers. There is something artificial about agency-owned credits. Volunteer-owned VH always add up to the total hours worked, whereas agency-owned credits are additional VH created to facilitate transfers, which may be uncreated if they are turned back in to the issuers for redemption. Every credit owned by an agency is a liability for another agency, so in sum they own nothing. They can only play win-lose banking games with their VH. Convertibility adds to the value of ownership, and volunteers will prefer to work for agencies that provide convertible VH. Agencies in turn will work hard to establish and maintain convertibility for their VH. The convertibility test is a stiff one, a form of quality control exercised by the volunteers themselves. And a stiff test is just what we need to create a new currency. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- SC5 COMMUNITY SERVICE REQUIREMENTS spending volunteer credits on health, education and welfare government and community service requirements non-profits and community service requirements community service credits reimbursed by the government agency services reimbursed by the government safeguards against corruption community service and volunteer hours SPENDING VOLUNTEER CREDITS ON HEALTH, EDUCATION AND WELFARE To extend Time Dollars to younger volunteers, the option of volunteers spending their credits on education has been introduced in some areas. This is a little different from spending credits on volunteer services. Educational services may use some volunteer teachers, but most teachers are paid, and in addition there are costs for facilities and administration. Time Dollars can't pay for these services. All they do is establish eligibility. Education and other social services are provided free to those who can't pay. Applicants are examined on their need and ability to pay. Time Dollars may be accepted as a positive qualification, in which case the volunteers do get some benefit for their credits. Or the service may have been available to them anyway, in which case spending their credits is a symbolic exercise that leads them to pursue self-improvement and feel empowered. A stronger approach is to require payment for services in either cash or Time Dollars. Nobody who is capable of volunteer work gets off free. Health clinics adopting this policy have found the following improvements in costs and revenues: 1. Clients who overused the service when it was free now think twice if they have to pay with their time. 2. Many clients who falsely claimed poverty come up with the money rather than work. 3. Admissions people don't have to spend time trying to spot these frauds. This looks like another win-win arrangement. Volunteers can spend their credits outside the volunteer economy, on services that cost money to provide. And the service providers make money, not from the volunteers, but from the clients who elect not to volunteer. Putting in volunteer hours on community service is gaining favor as a condition for receiving tax-paid education or welfare. This would produce the three kinds of savings above, plus an influx of millions of workers to the volunteer economy, to regenerate our decaying communities. And it would establish volunteer hours as a state- or nation-wide alternative currency. This is the crucial application of volunteer hours that can move them into the mainstream and integrate them with the existing economy. GOVERNMENT AND COMMUNITY SERVICE REQUIREMENTS California has proposed community service as a requirement for welfare recipients. The Clinton administration is pushing community service for student grants. This is an idea whose time has come, propelled by runaway budget deficits. But we will have to help it come about. The government doesn't see an adequate system in place for generating community service hours and is experimenting with costly creation of service jobs. What an opportunity for non-profits everywhere to get in on this new direction. They own this territory. The government doesn't want to create the jobs. All it needs is reliable and fraud-proof generation of volunteer work credits to be used in rationing social services. That's what we're learning to do: create a uniform volunteer currency. We've just found a big customer. NON-PROFITS AND COMMUNITY SERVICE REQUIREMENTS At present the government requires community service only from those so sentenced by the courts. These people are not volunteers. They are working off a debt to society, a negative balance in their accounts. They are often given the worst jobs, such as cleaning public buildings. They tend to do as little as possible and require close supervision. There's no future in these jobs because the workers will be off as soon as their time is up, if not sooner. The courts have given community service a bad name. To require community service from students and welfare recipients makes them feel as if they're classed with criminals, as if they're doing time. Those referred by the courts may work in the same organization with volunteers, but they exist in different worlds, different economies. Now we're bringing in a third group that falls somewhere in between. Where do they fit? In fact there are three fundamental types of economy: win-win, where the volunteers work. Win-lose, the money economy where employees work. And lose-lose, the world of crime and punishment where the court referrals work. The court referrals work for neither love nor money, but because they have to. The proposed new category of community service workers will be earning the right to social services and government support. They will be working to survive, to meet their needs, not unlike employees. They fit into a win-lose model. They work to meet their current requirements and may never accumulate credit like the true volunteers. If the non-profits want to provide community service jobs for social welfare recipients, it might be best to treat them like paid staff who happen to come free. They get paid in volunteer hours, which cost the agency nothing. They then turn these credits into government health, education or welfare benefits. The government expects to save money by requiring service hours in exchange for services or support. Only the truly needy will apply. If the government wants this system badly enough it will offer to reward the issuers of the volunteer hours at whatever rate is needed to generate the jobs. The non-profits will be turning the VH they issue into money. Presumably the volunteers who work for love and build up their credit can spend volunteer hours on government services also, but only if they meet the other requirements for eligibility. COMMUNITY SERVICE CREDITS REIMBURSED BY THE GOVERNMENT Let's look at the proposal that welfare recipients earn their support by doing community service or job training, which earn them credits. They would then give their credits to the government in exchange for their welfare check. The government can't use VH. All it wants is evidence that the time was spent in an approved manner. One form of approval is that the credits are convertible and accepted as good in the win-win economy. Or the government may define community service more narrowly and have a list of approved credits. Those VH turned in to the government go out of existence. The transaction may take place by check or direct debit. The government takes its due out of the worker's account and provides money in exchange. The government may also reimburse the issuer of the credits at an agreed rate, for providing the jobs and providing acceptable credits. Community service workers become true volunteers and enter the win-win economy only if they volunteer more hours than are reimbursed and accumulate credits in their account. Then they can reinvest their credits and help the causes they support. If they work fewer hours than required for their full entitlement, their reimbursement will be proportionately less. This will produce savings for the government, and allow people to gradually wean themselves from welfare and return to paid work as the opportunity arises, without any bureaucratic complications and disincentives. If community service workers claim reimbursement for all their credits, their economy looks like win-lose. They trade their credits for money. This is the only situation where credits are exchanged for money, and it answers the question, how can a person live on volunteer hours? The credits aren't really worth money, not in any market. They are only a measure of eligibility, to ration social services and produce a win-win for the government and the issuing agencies. AGENCY SERVICES REIMBURSED BY THE GOVERNMENT If community service credits are required for publicly-financed services such as health and education, these services may well be provided by non-profit agencies. If volunteers give their credits directly to the agencies in exchange for the services, that creates a problem. Agency-owned credits are not eligible for reimbursement, since they can be created by other means in unlimited quantities. Only hours worked by volunteers should be reimbursed. The three-way transaction is that the volunteer pays the government in volunteer hours, the government pays the agency in money, and the agency provides service to the volunteer. How may this transaction be accounted? There are in fact four parties involved, counting the issuer of the credits. This is no more complicated than the typical social service transaction, which involves a myriad of forms, approvals and accounting transfers. We may in fact cut through most of this bureaucracy and simplify the transaction. The volunteer needs to write a volunteer-hour check to the government with the agency providing the service named as beneficiary. The government will return the check to the issuer of the credits to debit the volunteer's account, and reimburse the service agency in money at the currently negotiated rate. That's simple enough for us to see what's going on. We may not want to use checks, however. We want to stay away from the idea of material currency that volunteers can own and trade. What is the equivalent transaction that does not involve the volunteer? The volunteer applies for service. The service agency sends the volunteer's authorization to the issuing agency, to debit the volunteer's account in favor of the government, with the service agency named as beneficiary. The agency that created the credits may also receive money from the government, as a commission or bonus for providing community service work and credits that the government would otherwise have to provide at great expense. Simple enough. It would cut out a lot of bureaucratic hassle and distribute social services more equitably. But now that government money is involved, what are the possibilities for corruption? Is the system secure? There is corruption in the present system. Can the volunteer-hour system be better or worse in this regard? SAFEGUARDS AGAINST CORRUPTION Volunteers ensure that agencies do a good job and treat volunteers and clients right. If agencies fail to do so, volunteers will take their credits elsewhere, resulting in loss of funding for negligent organizations. Volunteers may not be able to see corruption in how an agency keeps its books. What are the dangers here? Do we need outside auditors and banking regulations? Or can we maintain the self-regulation that is such a hopeful feature of the win-win economy? Reimbursement by the government for agency services is one point of potential abuse. We have avoided it by requiring volunteer-clients to provide credits to the government before the agency is reimbursed. This is an improvement on the present system, where overbilling the government is common. In the win-win economy agencies can create currency, not just when volunteers work an hour, but also when volunteers and agencies exchange or reinvest their credits. To limit credit creation we took the profit out of agency-owned credits, making only volunteer-owned credits eligible for reimbursement or use as a basis for information currency or funding applications. Agency-owned credits are self-regulating and come back for exchange or redemption if too many are issued. Can an organization inflate the number of volunteer-owned credits on its books? Let's consider the ways it could do this. First, it could award extra credits to volunteers and to clients unable to volunteer. Some of this is justified in expanding the definition of the volunteer economy. We have defined students as volunteers, and have given clients credit for putting in time in ways that are therapeutic and reduce their demand for services. Client credits can also be viewed as an entitlement. The awarding of credits is regulated by their definition: volunteer hours. If more are awarded than hours worked, this stands out. Individual volunteers may go along with it, but soon the lax accounting becomes generally known and the organization will start losing support and investment. Its excessive issue of credits will then become a liability as they start coming back for exchange or redemption. And word could reach the government which could drop these credits from its approved list. Second, an organization could create fictitious volunteers. Furthermore, there would never be any danger that these phantoms would move their credits elsewhere. They could not claim reimbursment either, but their imaginary hours may fool funding sources that base their support on hours worked or hours invested. When we come to lending volunteer-owned credits in the win-win economy, we may have to bring the volunteers into the act, as we did for reimbursement. Phantom volunteers could be a problem, but they are risky to the agency. If we require that agencies open their books the fictitious names will come to light and ruin the agencies' reputation, investment and currency. COMMUNITY SERVICE AND VOLUNTEER HOURS Community service requirements could add millions of new workers to the volunteer economy. Where are the new jobs to come from? Will this give rise to "credit factories" which make work for people who need the credits? Or can the volunteer economy expand and absorb the new people? Are they really volunteers? The values behind volunteer hours become important if VH are to expand into this new market, where credits are exchanged for welfare checks. Volunteers determine by their investments which agencies can produce convertible VH, and volunteers will tend to support those organizations that produce a genuine community service. This grassroots quality control appeals to the government and funding agencies, which can't afford to inspect and qualify every little group in the community service business. The provision of standard credits validated by the community makes the expansion of community service possible, Won't the new welfare VH swamp the influence of the old volunteer-earned VH? No, because we've gone back into the past and built up the VH capital of the traditional volunteers and organizations. It is that capital that stands behind the convertibility and validation of VH. New people and the new organizations that might spring up to cater to them have no volunteer capital and nothing to back up their VH. And if they cash in the hours as fast as they are earned, they never will accumulate any capital. Thus community service based on VH must grow out of genuine volunteer groups, and the service performed must fulfill the values of long-time volunteers. Those who cash in their VH, we have noted, are following the win-lose model, and by giving up their VH they give up their influence on the values behind VH. In this way VH maintain an automatic immunity to win-lose influences. They continue to be volunteer hours even when earned by non-volunteers, because the work and values of volunteers define the currency. SC6 THE FUTURE OF VOLUNTEER CREDITS volunteer information service nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and global aid self-help in the third world: the last shall be first can the win-win economy replace the rule of violence? a voluntary system volunteer credits must work in the present VOLUNTEER INFORMATION SERVICE The vision is a comprehensive community information network, run by and for volunteers, agencies and clients. This is more than a management support database for non-profits. It is a service for everybody: volunteers, clients and the community. It is accessible in a number of offices and by phone. It is a source of education, dialog, advertising, community information, and connection on a wide range of interests. The goal is to empower the disadvantaged, involve the disabled, and motivate the volunteers. The plan is to channel our values, desires, goals, knowledge, offers and needs into the information network. We can benefit from matching offers and needs, combining for social and political goals, finding jobs and services, and connecting with people with common interests. Having an information service is a novelty to most people, especially those in need who could benefit the most. The idea is to bring the wealth of contacts, exchanges, sources of help and general education to anybody who can use it, and support the kinds of voluntary activities that make a community work. It's still a hard sell, to get participation on a regular basis. The users will want to find their information all in one place. Advanced database and networking software can help by assembling the information relevant to each individual. And it should be available somewhere they go regularly, or over the telephone. Information systems are normally expensive. There are fears that our world is dividing into the information-rich and -poor. An information system for those with no money must be run on volunteer labor. Participants will purchase their services with volunteer hours, and earn volunteer hours by contributing to their information system. There is much work involved in information collection, on the phone or on the street, and transcribing it, entering data in the computer. There will always be room for more volunteers to do it, to contribute to the wealth of information available to the community. And the work itself helps tie the community together, make contacts, discover opportunities. Another benefit: the volunteer gains skills in the information-processing field and becomes more employable. Users of the service do not necessarily have to run it. They can earn their volunteer hours elsewhere. It is the information network that will establish the principle and practice of networking volunteer hours -- transferable credits that can go anywhere. To access the information service, both volunteers and agencies will want their credits to be convertible. Keeping volunteer hours locked up will not be popular. And agencies will want to be a source of information, a node in the network, both as a service for their members and to keep their volunteer hours from going to other information providers. NONGOVERNMENTAL ORGANIZATIONS (NGOs) AND GLOBAL AID Volunteer hours start out with local scope, accepted only as far as the fame of their issuing organizations extends. The global aid organizations can extend that scope worldwide. Volunteers can then invest their credits in areas of need anywhere in the world. This would give the NGOs a strong position in the volunteer economy. There would be a flow of credits from rich to poor areas, and funding sources would tend to follow these credit flows, for a number of reasons: One reason is faith in the collective judgement of volunteers. Another is the potential for the volunteer economy to transform the distribution of aid. If the NGOs adopt volunteer credit systems, they will be issuing volunteer credits to the volunteers and client populations in troubled areas, where there may be no money and no functioning economy. Volunteer credits can provide an economy and a structure of self-help. They can be used to ration the aid and distribute it equitably. And the way people spend their credits will provide vital feedback on what kind of help is needed, and where, and when. There will usually be several relief agencies in an area, and the credit flows will indicate which are doing a good job. This will promote quality and efficiency, leading to the best use of resources. SELF-HELP IN THE THIRD WORLD: THE LAST SHALL BE FIRST Local self-help groups in troubled areas can learn to issue credits and participate in the volunteer economy. They will find that their volunteer hours are worth the same as those earned anywhere in the world, and can be used to attract donations and support, participate in information networks, and connect with the NGOS' globally-recognized VH. It is in the most impoverished nations of the earth, where there is little or no money to be earned, that the win-win economy is most likely to replace the money economy. The last shall be first to embrace the future. CAN THE WIN-WIN ECONOMY REPLACE THE RULE OF VIOLENCE? Third-world ghettos are invading the first world, in America and Europe, and the second world, the failed communist economies. Where the money economy has already failed, the logic of win-win is clearer. The alternative is not win-lose but lose-lose, the pervasive violence that is taking over these areas. If the values of win-win and volunteer credits offer a route to self-improvement and abundance, young people will have a real option, other than poverty or violence. How will they choose? We habitually think in terms of help fom outside to troubled areas and disadvantaged people, but it will be more valuable and more enduring if those people can create their own volunteer credit networks. It is an act of empowerment for a rejected or neglected group to come together and create their own currency, and use it both to tap into support and funding from the larger society, and to do some good in their community. This demands such values as trust, non-violence, cooperation, respect and concern for the needs of others. Participation in a volunteer credit system is a school of social values as well as a route out of poverty. If each group has to provide the values that make its volunteer credits good, this is much more challenging and transformative than accepting an established currency. It also respects the values of each community and subculture, and gives members a practical education in win-win economics. A VOLUNTARY SYSTEM The volunteer economy is a voluntary system. The principle of free choice is at its heart, and it must remain free of force, fraud, legal threat or government control. Of course we will run into these things, but we should recognize that they belong to some other economy. The voluntary system itself rejects groups that fail to meet expected standards of community service. Their VH will not be accepted, and they will be out of the win-win economy. Thus the volunteer economy polices itself automatically without rules, threat or confrontation. The collective judgement of those who hold VH determines who's in the win-win economy. High standards will help to avoid boundary disputes. If any group trespasses into the win-lose world of business or the lose-lose world of criminality, that's where they belong, and the laws of those worlds apply to them. It's important to keep this boundary in mind. Win-win and voluntarism are key points that define the volunteer economy, and define it as part of the spiritual economy. To maintain volunteer hours as an independent spiritual currency, it is necessary to respect the boundary and secure the respect of those on the other side. That is why we must examine our beliefs and values every step of the way as we build the volunteer economy, and build it with care to the highest standards. We're aiming high, for a durable spiritual currency that can't be taken over or destroyed by the old order. Such a currency can inspire us in the present, and provide a new approach to the future. VOLUNTEER CREDITS MUST WORK IN THE PRESENT While it's good to aim high, volunteer credits must make sense each step of the way for each group, volunteer, client and administrator. Each step is voluntary for everybody, and it must make sense on its own terms in the present. Each step must make people feel better, contribute more, achieve more, learn something. It should save money, improve the community, meet local needs. The volunteer economy is created by everybody from the grassroots, not handed down as law or grand plan from on high. What counts is what we can do next, whether it's volunteering, or recording our hours, or conducting a historical credit inventory, or forming a group to examine our values and the ideas raised in this book.