Building a New Economy with Volunteer Credits - Page 3

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.

Placed in the public domain December 1983 by Derek Brownlee derekb@bslnet.com