The Lessons of Kiva

Stanford Magazine has a terrific article about Kiva http://www.kiva.org called “Small Change, Big Payoff” by Cynthia Haven. This is the story of how Matt and Jessica Jackely Flannery created it to enable people to make micro loans to entrepreneurs around the world.

The results are awesome: more than 123,000 people have loaned more than $12.4 million to 18,000 entrepreneurs. In fact, there so many lenders that there’s has been limits so that everyone can make a loan. The process involves reading a short profile about each entrepreneur and then deciding which to fund. From beginning to end, you can make a loan in under five minutes if you’re a slow typist. Lenders do not earn interest though the micro-finance organizations that helped Kiva find the entrepreneur does. Entrepreneurs pay 99.67 percent of the loans.

Guy Kawasaki

Full Story: http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2007/11/the-lessons-of.html