Kiva.org - Xmas gift suggestion for ballas

[Cry Me A River]

I first posted in OOT about Kiva.org two and a half years ago:

http://archiveserver.twoplustwo.com/ubbt...rue#Post3755831

Since then, Kiva.org has really taken off, being featured on Oprah, The Today Show and in Clinton's book, "Giving".

Today I'm finally putting my money where my mouth is and I'm going to give my wife a couple hundred dollars in Kiva.org gift certificates for Christmas.

OOT often has "What should I buy my girlfriend?" threads, and Christmas is coming. So here's an idea for all you guys.

Kiva.org is a microlending site. They give loans to small businesses in the third world where a couple hundred dollars can be six months salary. When you join Kiva.org and put money into the site, you get to choose which businesses to fund. So you lend money to a farmer so he can buy a couple extra pigs and chickens. Or you lend money to a weaver to buy a better loom. Etc.

My wife spent yesterday afternoon rediscovering Kiva.org. She's an artist and some of her regular venues are farmers markets. So she's super-sympathetic since half these people are selling in local markets.

The loans aren't charity, the money gets repaid and at a rate that crushes traditional banking - Kiva.org has a 99.75% repayment rate. Nobody wants to be the one to screw it up for everyone else, and these are business people, not charity cases, so repayment is a matter of pride.

You don't get any interest on your loan, so you're foregoing whatever you would have made dumping the money in an ING account. So that is your "donation". At current ING type rates, that's around $5 per $100 loaned, per year. That's not a lot to pay to help turn someone's life around. And you get regular updates from your clients, easily worth it in "entertainment value".

Kiva.og has gift certificates. I was quickly and easily able to buy them with my credit card. They're printable (they don't actually mail anything) so anybody stuck last-minute, you're all set. Purchases are through Paypal. I haven't had an active Paypal account in years. You don't need a Paypal account and it was no problem for me to make the purchase without a Paypal account.

Obviously this is not for everyone. However, if your girl is at all "globally conscious" or "bleeding heart" this is a great gift! Or if you think a more "traditional" gift is important, as part of a larger gift - ie, Give her a $100 gift certificate to the spa to heal herself and a $100 gift certificate to Kiva.org to heal the planet.

[mbillie1]

This is awesome actually, I am going to do this I think

[Cry Me A River]

BTW, once your loan or loans are repaid, you can take the money back out of the site or reinvest in another business or businesses.

[xorbie]

I found this a while back and never really got around to donating money, but I will now. Thanks for the reminder.

[gisb0rne]

I agree this looks very nice.

[Claunchy]

According to the site, there are so many people trying to lend that they're capping the loans at $25 per business. So all you busto fools out there can contribute as well.

This is pretty cool CMAR. I'm definitely gonna do this.

[Cry Me A River]

They do take donations, which are tax deductible and fund the administrative costs of Kiva.org itself. But the loans are not donations (unless you're unfortunate enough to get stuck with one of the few that default on their loan).

Well, I guess if you leave the money in circulation on Kiva.org and never take it out. It effectively becomes a donation. But the cash is always there waiting for you. Be like if you deposited money in the bank you never withdraw. You didn't really donate it to the bank...

[Cry Me A River]

[ QUOTE ]
According to the site, there are so many people trying to lend that they're capping the loans at $25 per business.

[/ QUOTE ]

That's what getting on Oprah will do!

Just ask any author...

[XXXNoahXXX]

I think they need to start getting some more money to build because it seems crazy that they are capping donations.

I don't even get the point of this. "So that everyone has a chance to donate we are limiting to $25!" So what is this? Just a masturbatory feel good effort for us?

If someone out there wants a $1000 loan and I want to loan him $1000, why limit me?

I guess I understand the site would die if they ran out of people looking for loans, but obviously there is no lack of people in 3rd world countries that would like loans to get businesses going.

[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.