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Concept
Kiva (organization)
Summary
Kiva Microfunds is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization headquartered in San Francisco, California, that claims to allow people to lend money via the Internet to low-income entrepreneurs and students in 80 countries. Kiva's mission is "to expand financial access to help underserved communities thrive." They have been accused of deceptive business practices, misleading donors into believing their funds would be used for specific individuals and misrepresenting other aspects of their operations.
Kiva distributes funds that it receives to microfinance institutions, social impact businesses, schools or non-profit organizations and does not generally directly provide funds to specific individuals. These organizations are charged fees by Kiva and borrowers pay interest on most loans.
Kiva is supported by grants, loans, and donations from its users, corporations, and national institutions. Since 2005, Kiva has crowd-funded more than 1.6 million loans, totaling over $1.68 billion, with a repayment rate of 96.3 percent. Over 2 million lenders worldwide use the Kiva platform. Despite its size, independent review by GiveWell failed to find evidence that the organization produces significant social benefit, with at least one partner supposedly vetted by Kiva earning high profits while having a very high recipient drop-out rate.
Kiva was founded in October 2005 by Matt Flannery and Jessica Jackley. The couple's initial interest in microfinance was inspired by a 2003 lecture given by Grameen Bank's Muhammad Yunus at Stanford Business School. Jackley worked at the school and invited Flannery to attend the presentation. Soon after, Jackley began working as a consultant for the nonprofit Village Enterprise, which worked to help start small businesses in East Africa. While Flannery was visiting Jackley in Africa, the two spent time interviewing entrepreneurs about the problems they faced in starting ventures and found the lack of access to start-up capital was a common theme.
Official source
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