Neighbors are helping neighbors through time banks

By Michaela Haas

In a quiet corner of Northern California, among the misty orchards and rolling vineyards that power the region’s rich agricultural economy, a curious kind of wealth is quietly accumulating. It doesn’t shine like gold or flow like cash. It’s not tracked on Wall Street or stored in Swiss vaults. But for those who trade in it, it may be the most precious currency of all: time.

When Michael Fels and his partner, Jesada “Wee” Simla, wanted to learn how to make butter-laced croissants, they didn’t turn to online videos or enroll in a pricey cooking class. Instead, they posted a request on their local time bank in the city of Sebastopol, 50 miles north of San Francisco. Soon, a retired professional chef invited them into his kitchen, where they spent an afternoon rolling dough and laughing together, an experience that yielded more than just pastries. “He really was a master chef,” Fels recalls, smiling as he flips through photos from the day of flour-dusted smiles, crispy crescents, joy captured in crumb and crust.

This, Fels explains, is what a time bank is all about. “You give an hour of your time and earn an hour in return,” he says. “And sometimes, what you get back is so much more.”

Time banks operate on a premise that feels both old-fashioned and quietly revolutionary: that everyone has something to offer and that everyone’s time and skills are valued equally. In this benevolent economy, an hour spent fixing a neighbor’s faucet is worth the same as an hour of tax prep or Thai cooking.

In brief, a time bank does with time what other banks do with money: It stores and trades it. People receive credits — typically measured in hours — when they provide a service to another time bank member. Those cashing in credits for a service have their account debited. Through an online platform, registered users can offer and request services and log their credits and debits.

Money isn’t exchanged, though members might agree to cover expenses such as supplies or gas money. The system is flexible, allowing people to offer as much or as little time as they want and even the option to donate their credit hours to a friend or a community pot.

Thousands of time banks with several hundred thousand members have been established in at least 48 countries, stretching from the rural villages of Senegal to bustling cities in Japan, from China, New Zealand, Malaysia, Argentina, and Brazil to countries throughout Europe with millions of hours exchanged. In the United States alone, more than 500 local networks are helping more than 40,000 members reimagine what it means to belong, to be needed, and to give back. Some time banks specialize in clearly defined missions, such as a focus on support for parents of children with disabilities or to provide eldercare and hospice services to fill a need other organizations can’t address. There are even time banks that aim to reduce recidivism for juvenile detention and help with social reentry for people leaving prison, on the belief that it may support their well-being and strengthen their relationships and social ties to their community.

In Sebastopol, a town of just over 7,000 people, the local time bank boasts 300 members. Fels, an author and playwright, offers his expertise in editing, and his partner, Simla, who hails from Thailand, volunteers rolling authentic Thai spring rolls. Others exchange rides to the airport, plumbing repairs, or a few hours of company on a lonely afternoon.

For Fels, the president of the Rotary Club of Sebastopol Sunrise, his engagement with Rotary and the time bank go hand in hand: “The idea of both is to bring the community closer together.” His Rotary club focuses on community service, and in a recent survey, more than half of its 40 members overwhelmingly noted community service as the most important aspect of their membership. “We might help a member with some house repairs they can’t manage on their own,” Fels says, offering an example of where the time bank and Rotary overlap.

He learned about the time bank through his friend David Gill, Sebastopol’s time bank coordinator and unofficial time tycoon. Gill has 384 hours in his “savings” account, “but I haven’t recorded any of my hours since 2022,” he says. “I probably need to record another 750!” Gill likes to offer his expertise with computer programming, editing, and financial planning. In return, he asks for help when he needs a ride to the airport or to transport heavy furniture. “Steve who lives on the next block drove me and my partner to the Santa Rosa airport. Ken fixed the ice maker in our refrigerator, and Elaine did some electrical work,” he says, rattling off a few of the many examples.

If he had called professional repair and taxi services, the expenses would have been significant. However, the interest, so to speak, goes beyond the value of a mere transaction. The time banks are building social capital. “I’ve made wonderful friends I wouldn’t have met otherwise, and we now invite each other to our garden parties,” says Gill. “It’s about being a part of the community. You can’t put a price on that.”

Gill came to the time bank like most neighbors: through a whisper, a flyer, a friend. The semiretired health care administrator immediately thought it was a great idea and started helping out with coordination, and before long, he became the heartbeat of the operation. Now, he banks his hours with the quiet confidence of someone who knows their value — not in dollars, but in something deeper: “I think this might be the richest I’ve ever felt.”

He learned about the time bank through his friend David Gill, Sebastopol’s time bank coordinator and unofficial time tycoon. Gill has 384 hours in his “savings” account, “but I haven’t recorded any of my hours since 2022,” he says. “I probably need to record another 750!” Gill likes to offer his expertise with computer programming, editing, and financial planning. In return, he asks for help when he needs a ride to the airport or to transport heavy furniture. “Steve who lives on the next block drove me and my partner to the Santa Rosa airport. Ken fixed the ice maker in our refrigerator, and Elaine did some electrical work,” he says, rattling off a few of the many examples.

If he had called professional repair and taxi services, the expenses would have been significant. However, the interest, so to speak, goes beyond the value of a mere transaction. The time banks are building social capital. “I’ve made wonderful friends I wouldn’t have met otherwise, and we now invite each other to our garden parties,” says Gill. “It’s about being a part of the community. You can’t put a price on that.”

Gill came to the time bank like most neighbors: through a whisper, a flyer, a friend. The semiretired health care administrator immediately thought it was a great idea and started helping out with coordination, and before long, he became the heartbeat of the operation. Now, he banks his hours with the quiet confidence of someone who knows their value — not in dollars, but in something deeper: “I think this might be the richest I’ve ever felt.”

Many time banks are volunteer community projects, but the one in Sebastopol is funded by the city and operates under the nonprofit status of the Community Cultural Center. Some cities find that support for time banks more than pays for itself in the services their members provide for populations like older adults. Time bank members in St. Gallen, Switzerland, for example, regularly help older residents run errands, shop for groceries, get to the doctor, or simply find company — all of which can ease demand on government-funded services.

After all, time is money. “Every volunteer hour [in the U.S.] is valued around $29,” explains Krista Wyatt, executive director of the Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit TimeBanks.Org, which helps volunteers establish time banks all around the world. “Now think about the thousands of dollars a city saves when hundreds of citizens serve their community for free.”

The idea of time as a bankable currency goes back several centuries to the labor theories of early economists. In the U.S., civil rights lawyer Edgar Cahn rediscovered the idea of time banks while looking for ways to fight poverty in the early 1980s after money for social programs dried up.

Today, time banks are like the 2.0 version of what used to happen organically in small communities: Neighbors helped raise barns and children alike. But in an increasingly atomized world, those natural support systems have frayed. Michael Fels sees the time bank as a way to repair them.

And maybe that’s the deepest truth of time banking: It fosters human connection and the quiet transformation of time into care, beauty, and belonging. Given freely, time — like kindness — comes back tenfold.

This story originally appeared in the September 2025 issue of Rotary magazine.