[Cry Me A River]

I expect it's a temporary administrative problem brought on by sudden growth from exposure on Oprah etc, the last couple months. They were just on Oprah in Sept, that's gotta be a HUGE boost that I'm sure they're still dealing with.

Presumably they only have a certain amount of staff and can only process so many applicants per day (etc). If they didn't cap loans they'd probably run out of borrowers faster than they can be replaced. They can't really go several days or weeks without any borrowers available or interest in the program would wither. Better to get new people signed up right away, when they're interested, rather than hope they'll come back when there are more borrowers.

I'm sure it's not a trivial process - They need "field partners" on the ground to assess applicants and then whatever administrative work Kiva itself needs to do. A big part of the point is they're not just rubber-stamping handouts to people but rather helping people with legit businesses.

It's also probably not a bad idea to encourage diversification of your loans. So if someone does default lenders aren't soured on the experience of losing all their money in one shot. If you make 10 loans for $25 each and 9 are repaid, you're still going to feel pretty good about the process. A lot better then if you made 1 loan at $250 and it defaulted.

They're saying the restriction is temporary, so hopefully if they're able to get more staff, volunteers, and/or field parters they'll lift the restrictions. If you'd like to help this out, I expect including a donation for Kiva itself along with funding a loan would be the best way to do it.