Start-up questions

When you are first starting a Time Bank there are many nuts and bolts questions you will have. This is a place for you to ask these questions and receive answers from other Time Banks on how they run their Time Bank.

Ask away!

Perhaps I am having a hard time manipulating this website.
Where are the questions others have asked?
Gitama

Hi, Gitama! The forums are relatively new, so there may not be questions yet in all of the areas. Feel free to post questions you can't find posted already, because chances are good that someone coming after you will be asking it, too!

Jen
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Jen Moore
Associate for Outreach, Membership and Fundraising Support
Time Banks USA
jenmoore@timebanks.org
www.timebanks.org

Is there a Miami/Ft Lauderdale or South Florida Time bank? In such a big city, I can't believe that there is no Time Bank in Florida. I am reading Time Dollars and I don't know how to find a program near me, or if I have to start one in my area?

Thank you

Hi we are a new time bank in New Zealand for which I am the co-ordinator. Roimata Timebank.

My questions:
Do children need their own email accounts to access comm weaver? I tried to add my daughter using my email account but it wouldn't let me. we want angel care for children under 16 but how do we do this?

Using comm weaver, logging hours. I have been logging hours daily for a service that i offered someone for a week. But is that how it must be done? I was thinking it seems quicker to log the hours after the week has finished but how do i do that and have the whole week show or is that not necessary. do i just choose the last day i did the work and then log the hours against that particular day?

thanks. am just new to this.

Hi there Sue
I just logged onto forum regarding something similiar and found this from you. We just realised that for our child members to be on guardian angel mode they have to have an email. To by pass this we just wrote 'child not on email' in the email box. This then let us have access to the guardian angel option, but a bit of funny way around things.

We will have to add next child's email as 'child1 not on email' as the system will only let you have one email the same.
Jules

Further to this, we have since found out that when you send a broadcast you get an error message, which led me to believe that the broadcast had not gone out. It actually did, the error message was in respect of the dodgy emails addresses we had put in as above. We found this our via Manisha and Jen Moore. I have written to them today to see if there is a possible way around this.

Jules

Please never enter anything but a valid email address in the email field.
There is a reason why the email sign up includes a validation process - it ensures that Community Weaver can communicate with the member. As a Coordinator, you have the ability to edit / update the email address of a member but using it for something other than what it is intended for is not recommended and strongly discouraged. Your Broadcasts could fail. We spent several hours debugging only to find it was misuse of the email address field. This effort translates into a real hard cost to TimeBanks USA. Please do not do this or recommend this to anyone.

If a member has no email, there is no question of them logging in or transacting on Community Weaver. This member is an offline member whose transactions are managed by the Coordinators. There is therefore no need for a Guardian Angel for offline members.

Hi Manisha
Sorry about that. I'll consider myself severely told off.
Julie [/quote]

Hi, everyone! Thanks for clarifying the importance of validating emails, Manisha. I think it also helps to know that going through that process helps to prevent spammers from infecting the Time Banks.

There are a few ways you can handle Community Weaver accounts for children if you don't want them to have their own email address just yet.

First, there's the way mentioned already by Manisha, which is just to make them offline members. That means that a coordinator would have to manage their offers and requests on their behalf, and would therefore achieve the same results as the Guardian Angel mode.

For a less coordinator-intense approach, parents can create aliases in their email programs that they can use to create profiles for thier children. Most email programs allow you to do this, so that you can have multiple email addresses all coming to the same inbox. That way, parents can monitor their children's interactions, the Time Bank can additionally use Guardian Angel Mode, and children who are more mature can access their profiles themselves. I hope that's helpful!

The forums are relatively new, so there may not be questions yet in all of the areas. Feel free to post questions you can't find posted already, because chances are good that someone coming after you will be asking it, too!
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