onthego15

Wow ! 76 new loans. That is loaning wildly (and generously)
Welcome to the team. ^

lisamcgu

Great on getting grouponS. When I got mine a while back it said only one per person. Perhaps it was just one per person per city? I notice each new link for the groupon seemed to be for dif cities.

GenevaFlyer

Paging Dovster!

Here is a lending opportunity that could fit your parameters ....

http://www.kiva.org/lend/253984

Cheers,

GenevaFlyer

Cholula

Not sure what Dovster is going to do but I just made a loan to her.

Dovster

Certainly you would not want me to be unfaithful to either of these borrowers:

http://www.kiva.org/lend/252879

http://www.kiva.org/lend/187766

The latter, it should be noted, was my first loan and the only one I gave $100 to. I can't begin to think of why.

GenevaFlyer

It must have been due to her commercial assets .... or maybe some other assets?

GenevaFlyer

Dovster

I believe that the two things which interested me in her were located considerably higher (and on the other side) than her assets.

JDiver

I just reloaned $175 (up to 228 loans now!) so we are up to:

204 team members
2,572 loans
totaling $78,350

Can we make it an even $80,000 by the end of 2010? If you have any paid back funds, it may be time to get your assets in gear.

JY1024, thanks for the up and up on the Groupon.

cathaana

Does anybody know how much those microfinance institutions Kiva gives the money to charge in interest (or who they are so I can do a bit more research)? I would love to make some loans but there has been a lot of bad press recently about those banks charging interest as high as 30%.

Dovster

You can find out who they are by clicking on the information about the person you want to make the loan to. That will tell you what organization will actually give him the money and a little bit about it. You can do further research on the organization via Google.

ralfkrippner

Hi Cathaana - would be great to have you joining the team here! ^

Please keep us updated on your background checks. I wondered about the same question...

jbcarioca

I just made 8 loans totalling $1948 to get us to $80,298. Now we need other people to get us above $100,000 by year end! These loans are for my spouse's birthday, as I mentioned a little while ago.

The matched donation to Kiva of $395 that I made is especially satisfying because it became $790. That's a good incentive, isn't it?

One area I am not doing so well is recruiting others to our cause, although I'm trying. It seems to me loans and donations to Kiva make great presents to people with just a little bit of interest in the welfare of their fellow man.

HansGolden

This post explains the issue well:
Furthermore, many of the lending agencies that Kiva lends through are non-profit as well. The following lenders jumped out at me as particularly trustworthy as they are part of World Vision, and thus totally non-profit:

• Kenya Agency for Development of Enterprise and Technology (KADET), a partner of World Vision International
• Vision Finance Company s.a. (VFC), a partner of World Vision International

As an example, if you click through to KADET's profile, you'll see that while they charge 35.07% interest, they have a -23.74% return on assets. The shortfall is made up by donors. They're not making money, they're losing money. It's a charity. In fact, the average return on assets (profitability) for all Kiva partners is -1.39%. That's because, as the poster I quoted from Scam.com, it costs just as much to administer a small loan as a large loan, so the % rates must be higher. Furthermore, they're not chasing the kinds of loans that will make them money, but the kinds of loans that will help folks out.

VFC has similar numbers:
38.49% interest
-36.95% return on assets/profitability

Kiva gives this description of the return on assets number:
As you can see below, for an organization like World Vision with donations of $1.2 billion/yr, profitability is not linked to long-term sustainability as they are a non-profit org whose whole purpose is charity (and their microfinance subsidiaries are a small part of that). Negative profitability is merely proof that they're not cheating people or taking advantage of them or using our money to make profits for themselves with these loans, but rather that these loans are indeed half-charity. In fact, I believe in microfinance as a *better* way to help folks than handouts. "Teach a man to fish..."

World Vision:

• Forbes - The 200 Largest U.S. Charities (and Rankings) - 90% efficiency rating
• Charity Navigator - 4 star rating
• MinistryWatch - 4 star rating

Wikipedia on World Vision:
I'm a follower of Jesus, so I prefer well-respected Christian organizations, but I'm sure those of other persuasions can find similar trustworthy non-Christian organizations among Kiva's lenders that are totally non-profit.

For the record, I've read a bunch about microfinance (and was even in discussions to start a microfinance organization) and believe strongly in the mission (and worthiness) of microfinance. I've known about Kiva for years and have been meaning to put money with them, even though it's only recently that I've taken the plunge with Kiva.

Dovster

I am not a follower of Jesus but I do not care at all about the religious orientation of these organizations. If they help people who are trying to help themselves, I am all in favor of their work and will contribute to it.

(BTW, who persuaded me?)

HansGolden

I agree. I think $100K should be our year-end goal! $80K is shooting too low.

Definitely. I ordered a bunch of Kiva cards as gifts this year.