Kula Ring – Giving the gift of time

Eli suggested that I take a look at www.community-exchange.org and possibly use its system as the basis of kularing. community-exchange.org implies exchanging products and services and looks similar to LETS systems like Ithaca Hours. Kularing shouldn’t work that way.

In kularing, there is no exchange rate between an hour of effort and the local currency. There is no exchange at all.

People give their time without expectation that they will get something directly. Members will gain status based on the gifts of their time, the quality of their efforts and how much the receivers appreciates her/his gifts.

Before I proceed, let me define two terms: need and offer. A need is a task that a member, the receiver, needs done whether she participates in the need or not. Another member, the giver, makes an offer to fulfill another member’s need. The receiver chooses from among the givers as they desire.

The system works by letting each person or group list their needs, and then the receiver can review and agree to offers by givers.

Status can then be used to filter what is presented such that a person with higher status will be listed earlier in a search of needs or offers. So if you give your time a lot and make a quality effort, your resulting higher status will mean that your needs will be more likely to be seen by others and that you should get better offers. Likewise, you the higher your status, the more likely your offers will be selected.

Listing your friends in the system would help with issues of trust since you could confine yourself to only offers from your friends and through friend of a friend features you could ask how reliable a particular giver is.

Hmmm… offers sounds too much like an exchange system. Need to rethink using that word.