This paper looks at timebanking – a system of exchange in which people trade services using time instead of money as currency. It is framed from a social work perspective as a social innovation that contributes to poverty alleviation and increasing inclusion. Most such organizations however fail to institutionalize as care providers. In this paper, I discuss a rare success story—a TB in Nizhny Novgorod, which has been functioning for over 15 years and positioned itself as a non-charitable organization. I engage with sharing economy studies which has mostly concentrated on extreme cases: business-to-customer operations or grassroots communities practicing radical alternatives to market exchange. The case studies have been united by an assumption that such organizations would generate social capital. However, there has been limited evidence to support this claim. I aim to explore whether social capital is the factor that explains the sustainability of this association. The study was informed by 22 in-depth interviews with the gatekeepers and members of this community. Results revealed that time bankers do not tend to create strong and sustainable relationships outside of the framework of the exchange.I put forward the following explanatory hypothesis: the calculativeness of time bankers, the market-driven valuations of egalitarian service exchange and a unilateral attitude to the exchange are in conflict with a longing for Gemeinschaft based on the norms of mutuality.
