Edgar exposed our staff to time dollars in 1997, said Charles R. Howell, CRLS special projects coordinator in San Francisco. We started slowly and organically. Now I ve got five time-dollar coordinators in different levels of maturity of the program. CRLS time dollars can be spent on a variety of social services, not just legal services. However, getting other social service programs to cooperate isn t always easy, Howell said.
Some agencies resist trading services for time dollars because they see it as competition.
Some programs are so zeroed-in on their own thing that they can t see the advantage of time dollars, Howell said. They see it as more work instead of a building tool. But if you use time dollars the right way, they re a great tool, he said. If a poor client can build up enough time dollars to bring home groceries and clothing, you ve helped with some of the basic things poor people spend most of their money on. It creates dignity for the client, Rhudy added.