JDiver

I know in general, repayment rates exceed 97%.

In my personal experience, with $28,405 lent in total in 1,065 loans, I've had three loans go belly up - and those were partially repaid.

Given most loans are $25.00 per lender, I reckon I'm out of ~$50.00 over my tenure with Kiva. I'm sure I've spent $50 less wisely.

pindi

Just joined after accidentally stumbling on to this thread. Made a small loan to a project in Congo - will be reading up about this more to educate myself and make my next few loans count.

Thanks for starting this team!

JY1024

Welcome to the team!

If you have any questions, please feel free to post here. As you can see, we are pretty open to discussioning all sides of microfinancing.

KRSW

I've been doing this for about a year. My stats:

Total loans: 230
Total lent: $6,550.00
Total lost: $0.18
Amount of currency loss: $0.18

For those keeping score, that works out to ~$28.47 lent per loan, $0.000027 per dollar lost. The $0.18 total lost is due to currency losses.

I use KivaLens.org to find my loans. My filters are Risk Ratings: 3* to max, Default rate: min-0.3 percent. The majority of my loans end up going to Peru & Philippines. Nothing intentional about those countries, rather their organizations keep defaults low and currencies stable enough that I know I'm going to get a decent amount back. Sadly, I avoid the US loans as their batting averages are quite low. Keep in mind that credit in the USA is handed out like candy, so if someone's not able to obtain credit via traditional means in the USA, something's up.

I'm not sure where else you can pick up 32,000 UR points for $0.18.

b00mer89

So i signed up, joined team FT, credited $50 to my account, made 2 loans, and then it was requiring a "mandatory donation" of 15%, is this an occurrence on every loan that i will contribute to moving forward, or a 1 off? I don't want to seem ungrateful for the opportunity to participate, but I'm not keen on being hit for a donation right away in addition to the loan portion of it...

haylady

I was not quite clear of the donation portion, but am thrilled to help someone who are not just asking for donations, but asking for help to help themselves. It is so little compared to the solicitations I constantly get once I donate to a charity

USHPNWDLUA

I assume you’re referring to the donation that goes directly to fund Kiva? I’ve never seen a mandatory donation (kinda an oxymoron, huh?). I’ve only ever seen the web page enter a suggested donation amount, which I could override.

ETA: I just went to the site, made a loan, and on the checkout page, I see the “Optional Donation to Kiva’s Operational Costs” box, with $3.50 suggested in the box. I changed it to $0.00, then hit checkout. The $3.50 remained there on the resulting page. Turns out you really do have to hit that little “update” link next to the $value box for it to really remove that $3.50. I went back a page, entered $0, hit update, the $3.50 was removed, and then on the resulting page, the “Optional Donation” really was set to $0.00.

b00mer89

I see, next time around I'll have to try it again, goes to a good cause so not overly torn up about it, was just kind of frustrating as they didn't do a great job spelling it out IMO. appreciate the insight and i look forward to dumping a little more in every month to watch it grow.

Barks

Excited to find this thread! I invested in Kiva many, many (>10 yrs) years ago, and I loved it! I love knowing that I can be part of a larger group of people helping others. Needless to say, I’m all signed up, and invested in my first loan! Thanks for helping discover Kiva again.

Snuggs

"Join the Kiva FlyerTalk micro-credit lending team."

Was searching on FT for something else today, and noticed the banner. Been a long time since I logged in to my Kiva acct and found half of my funds were back avail as a credit. So, I went on a blitz, whipped thru the credit, and added some additional funds.

Impressed to see that Fters have shot past $3mil and on the way to $4mil of total loans made. Taking into account the very meager default rate and reasonable donations to Kiva ops, this might be, hour for hour, some of the cheapest entertainment on the internet.

Now, back to my research on EQDs

JDiver

I am so proud to be a member of the FlyerTalk Kiva Lenders Team! Glad you're here, everyone.

762 micro-lenders have made 54,860 microloans to people in need of a hand up to the total of $3,679,975 to date.

2015: $834,600

2016: $849,075

2017 to date (15 Oct): $951,750

It looks like 2017 will be our first million dollar year!

Everydog

The PayPal matching offer was a great reminder that it was time to give again and, as a bonus, today I had the rare opportunity to put "one of ours" over the top. Kiva is the best and I owe my participation to FlyerTalk.

oliver2002

The donation is not mandatory, if you click on the amount you can dial it down to 0.

What annoys me the most is that they happily pass on the risk of default, but don't share the profits they make and ding you for 'donations' to Kiva on top. The recepients of the loan also pay interest for the loan to the local agency, which is shared by Kiva too.

JDiver

I'd not be in favor of no interest loans, believing the borrower must have skin in the game. The local micro lender also has expenses - offices, staff, servicing the loan and often providing technical assistance. Often enough servicing the loan and providing technical support require a staff use bike or moto to go out into remote and rural areas to deal with the borrower.

And Kiva itself, as a loan aggregator with costs including marketing, loans processing and administrative costs vetting and working with the US sponsors, local lenders and regulators in loco. TANSTAAFL. The alternative is no micro loans for the entrepreneur on the ground who will be laughed out of a normal bank and have to resort to usurious and often criminally associated lenders.

I don't object to supporting these costs. If someone objects to supporting Kiva, as you mention it's pretty easy to opt out. And over the years, as I posted recently,

"In my personal experience, with $28,405 lent in total in 1,065 loans, I've had three loans go belly up - and those were partially repaid.

Given most loans are $25.00 per lender, I reckon I'm out of ~$50.00 over my tenure with Kiva. I'm sure I've spent $50 less wisely."

JY1024

Trying to understand the gripes listed above...

- "happily pass on the risk of default": yes, that's the model of most micro-financing. The platforms facilitate the transfer of money between the lenders (i.e., us) and the partners (e.g., microfinance institutions "on the ground" that disburse, administer loans to the actual end borrower). It seems to be pretty transparent that money we lend could potentially default.
- "don't share the profits they make": yes, they're a US non-profit entity. We're not shareholders in their company. The revenue that Kiva generates goes back into supporting the company. I don't think they've ever stipulated that lenders like us get dividends or any positive returns on our loans. Kiva does not "profit" from any returns on the capital that you or I choose to loan.
- "ding you for donations": Kiva has a full office of IT staff, field partner managers, marketing staff, corporate partnership staff, HR, finance/tax operations, etc. Some of that payroll and rent cost is offset from sponsorship and foundations, but much of it is via private donations. Kiva should make it clear that it's an optional donation, but it goes to support their basic operations.
- "recipients of the loan also pay interest for the loan": True. The micro financing institution (MFI) on the ground has to pay staff and rent to maintain an office full of people to recruit borrowers, administer the loan, collect on the loan, some provide educational programs, etc. The interest that gets paid by the borrower supports the actual local MFI, not Kiva.
- "which is shared by Kiva too": I'm confused by this. Kiva does not share in any profits from the MFIs. Kiva simply facilitates the transactions of interest-free loans from the Kiva lenders and the repayments from the hundreds of local micro-finance institutions. The interest charged by the MFIs goes directly to the MFIs. (And yes, some of those interest rates are VERY high to those of us who have easy access to capital. But servicing a loan in some parts of the world is very expensive - to collect the equivalent of $.50 a week from a lender could be an 5+ hour round-trip journey for someone on bus/bike/motorcycle/tuk-tuk.)

Microfinancing has its pros and cons, and the research out there is still mixed on the actual long-term benefits of microfinancing.

But I'm fairly close to the Kiva team and operations (having just spent a day with their leadership team a few months ago). Each of us can decide what they want to do with their money - eat, drink, travel, be merry, make loans, etc. But let's have an open, fact-based conversation...