Kiva -- kick ass non-profit

[NobleSavage]

I just stumbled across this (maybe I'm slow), but I think it's one of the best non-profits I've seen.

http://www.kiva.org/

Since Kiva was founded in 2005:

1,223,586 Kiva lenders
$615,630,875 in loans
98.81% repayment rate

We work with:

278 Field Partners
450 volunteers around the world
79 different countries

 

[NobleSavage]

It get's better. Their are "teams" and the Atheists are kicking the Christian's ass.


http://www.kiva.org/teams

 

[Jolly_Penguin]

Thanks for the reminder. Been a while since I logged into my Kiva account and I have a bunch of funds to reloan out.

I have been redoing my will and generally getting my affairs in order and since I have no kids I am planning on splitting mostly between Doctors without borders (my charity of choice) and a group of other charities I haven't decided on yet. Maybe more to Kiva is a good idea.

Of the 114 loans I have given out since I started with Kiva a few years ago, only 8 have ended with a loss. I was very surprised how low a rate that is. It is better than many lenders I have worked for over the years here in Canada and the US.

Another benefit of Kiva, is that I have learned a lot of world geography of the poor areas of the planet. There are a few countries I had not heard of before that I learned about through Kiva.

On the downside, I have heard some concerns over microtransaction lending. Maybe somebody here knows the dark side of this? I have heard that although you take no interest from your loans, the loan agencies Kiva works with does, and from what I hear it can sometimes be steep. So it takes a bit of research to find a good lending partner. But even with the bad ones, I figure getting somebody who has little to nothing access to credit is probably a good thing, even if the creditor takes a large cut of their profits. Its kid of like giving foreign aid, even knowing a lot of it is lost to corruption, so that at least some of it gets to the people you want to have it.

 

[James Brown]

Been 'donating' for years. I think of it as charity, but it's giving that I can give repeatedly. I am also a member of the Atheists group, proud that we're the top lender, and I lend exclusively to women, because women have it tough enough in this world of ours.

 

[Jolly_Penguin]

Anybody here still doing this? I check in from time to time and just did. I had about $600 waiting to be redisbursed to somebody new, for the ninth or tenth time. The delinquency and default rate on these is surprisingly low. I have worked in finance and done collections in North America amongst businesses and that delinquency and default rate is much much higher.

 

[untermensche]

A great site and great enterprise.

For many Americans $100 is spent on deserts in a month.

Give up desert for a month and give the money to people who can barely pay for food.

 

[Axulus]

Not to splash cold water on a worthy goal, but beware the slick marketing by Kiva and also the lack of research demonstrating the effectiveness of micro-finance charities in general:

Today Kiva brings in over 17 million a year in revenue and support. It is backed by celebrities, it is high profile, and it is best known for the way it appears to bring individual stories to potential lenders and make them feel good about being able to contribute directly to a project they want to support.

But does it actually work? Is poverty being reduced through the work of Kiva? No. Not according to any of the research.

Despite many years of trying, independent academics have been unable to find any convincing data confirming an overall positive impact on poverty reduction achieved by indebting the poor…. With interest rates often exceeding 100 percent, it is not hard to see how microcredit can progressively increase rather than decrease poverty, as demonstrated poignantly by crises in Andhra Pradesh and elsewhere

The bolded part of that excerpt may come as a shock to some Kiva supporters. 100% interest? That can’t be true. Kiva is non-profit and doesn't charge interest right? Well yes and no. Kiva itself doesn't charge interest, but they also are not the ones making any of the loans. What they do is send money to other micro lending institutions who in turn charge 100% or more in interest. How much exactly? We don’t know because Kiva can’t or won’t say.

Kiva cleverly chooses to reveal out-of date portfolio yields instead of actual interest rates on loans, conveniently and consistently under-estimating the real cost to the poor…. Interest rates approaching 100 percent would raise too many eyebrows – they’re best hidden.

Well OK, but at least those making the loans have the ability to choose the project they want to fund through Kiva right? Maybe it costs more, but only funded projects are moving ahead, so there is no waste, right? Wrong again. Kiva is not efficient. And the loans you make to them are not for what you think.

In 2012 Kiva spent $14 million to loan $111 million. Despite most staff being volunteers, Kiva managed to spend $0.13 for every $1 loaned. Typical specialized microfinance [are] 6 or 7 times more efficient than Kiva in getting money from investor to poor person.

Kiva’s initial attraction was that it was a peer-to-peer lender, but it is not in fact a peer-to-peer at all. The loans featured on the website were made months before, and Kiva users are essentially buying them from the banks.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/...of-pretending-to-help-the-poor-The-Kiva-Story

Also see this critical article:

http://nextbillion.net/blogpost.aspx?blogid=3726

Kiva's response to that article is here (to keep things balanced):

http://nextbillion.net/blogpost.aspx?blogid=3731

And this article about microfinance in general:

http://www.givewell.org/international/economic-empowerment/microfinance

My personal favorite is Give Directly:

What do they do? GiveDirectly (www.givedirectly.org) transfers cash to households in developing countries via mobile phone-linked payment services. It targets extremely low-income households (more).

Does it work? We believe that this approach faces an unusually low burden of proof, and that the available evidence supports the idea that unconditional cash transfers significantly help people. It appears that GiveDirectly has been effective at delivering cash to low-income households. GiveDirectly has one major randomized controlled trial of its impact, and took the unusual step of making the details of this study public before data was collected (more).

Also, my #1 trusted source for charity evaluation and recommendations is Give Well:

http://www.givewell.org/

 

[untermensche]

...Kiva's response to that article is here (to keep things balanced):...

They rebutted everything.

These are no-interest loans. And really no penalty for not paying them back. To say different is a lie.

This is not investing and it is not about ending poverty which a program of this size can't do.

It is about one human helping another. It is about those with good luck helping those with bad luck.