Comments
Has poverty been solved?
Every time I go to Kiva these days, there’s NO ONE to lend money to.
I understand that there are bottlenecks in the loan application process, but it does give you the weird impression that no one is in need of money any more.
I wonder if Kiva started charging a fee, they could hire people to speed up the process? Maybe not necessary, but I did like the good old days when you could trawl through all the people trying to get stuff done and find someone who you feel a connection to, rather than clicking the first person you see on the basis that in 2 minutes their loan will have been fulfilled and your Kiva account will still have money in it.
This is in no means a complaint, it just seems weird that something so wildly successful has sort of ground itself to a halt.
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February 2nd, 2010 at 1:25 am
So interesting that you posted this now. In my Ethical Leadership class we were challenged to come up with the best way to invest $20 that our prof was donating. I won by offering up Kiva, due to the sustainability of the loan, the ripple effect of the loan, and the dignity with which it is done.
I wound up collecting $108 from the rest of the class and have been trying to find lendees to donate to. Sounds selfish, but it’s embarrassing to get everyone excited to donate and help and then go online and find that there are only a few people to donate to. It doesn’t make sense considering who many poor people there are.
Maybe Kiva hasn’t been getting enough donations towards their administrative fees? That could perhaps be affecting their outreach programs and relationships with other micro-lenders.
February 2nd, 2010 at 9:22 am
This is weird. And you’re not the first to notice, I’ve seen a few tweets saying the same thing. I’m surprised they haven’t put up anything on their site to explain the lack of projects. Hope it picks up again soon!
February 2nd, 2010 at 9:41 am
I think it is because the third parties they work with need to do all their work first before listing people and I think these days there are just so many people lending, that one group cannot keep up with another.
It would be interesting to know how many people make voluntary donations to Kiva and whether or not them taking a small fee (i.e 5% like Givealittle) would enable them to become more efficient.
I don’t think anyone would be against paying to cover the costs of running the website – given the costs of running most non profits!