Endless Gibberish

Kiva finally starts making loans available in the United States. Turns out they’ve partnered with Accion USA to make this happen. Click this link here to check out all the loans available.

At first I had mixed feeling about this but I guess if an individual wants to lend to someone in the United States it should be an available option. I decided to contribute to one loan because I collect loans and I want to partake in this big moment in Kiva’s history. I chose to loan to Alejandro from Westchester, NY. What I noticed that’s pretty cool is that there’s a short video clip of the entrepeneur.

I’ve decided to sum up what’s been happening so far in my lending experiences on Kiva. As you know helping others lift themselves out of poverty is a cause that I champion and truly believe in. Kiva.org has been helping me and countless other people loan our own money out to third world entrepreneurs. I started loaning heavily in June of this year so most of my loans have been funded from June onwards.

The Bloggers lending group on Kiva is growing with now 160 members. The group has 1,076 loans for a total of $28,400. Not a bad stat for a group that started on August 26, 2008.

In my personal Kiva portfolio I’ve participated in 1,008 loans. 886 of those loans are active, 116 are fully paid back, 1 has defaulted and 5 loans have been refunded (due to errors in loan listings or whatnot). The one loan that has defaulted was due to fraud on the part of the field partner (MIFEX) issuing the loan, rather than the borrower defaulting on the loan. My default percentage is considerably lower than the average across Kiva which is 2.85%. However I’ve only had 116 loans completed so it’s a relatively small sample size. I also have a couple of loans which are delinquent which might default also.

I don’t mind defaults in particular because I’ve accepted that there is risk to loaning on Kiva. I started loaning on Kiva with the expectation that 3% or so of my funds/loans would end in default and consider it an acceptable risk. That hasn’t been the case so far but who knows what will happen when the rest of my portfolio ages.

On a side note… as the majority of my money has been with Kiva they’ve been out of the equities market so that’s been a unexpected blessing. Although I probably would’ve loaned just as much if the market was doing well.

1,000 loans is a lot more than I expected to get involved in when I started loaning this year. Once I started loaning on Kiva it’s been an addicting experience that I can’t stop. My goal for the next year is to do another 1,000 loans. The experience has been rewarding in knowing in a small way my money and efforts have helped a couple people lift themselves out of poverty.

I would love to have at least 1 loan to a person in every country Kiva lends to. Below is a list of countries I haven’t had a chance to loan to yet but look forward to in 2009.

Afghanistan
Bulgaria
Cameroon
Cote D’Ivoire
Democratic Republic of Congo
El Salvador
Honduras
Iraq
Moldova
Mozambique
Palestine

Compiling this list makes me think about the sheer number of disenfranchised in the world.

That’s it, my year in review of lending on Kiva for those interested. I hope that my positive experience so far encourages others to give participating on Kiva a chance.

All information in this review is accurate as of December 19th, 2008.

Kiva is experimenting with lending teams. It’s still in beta mode and here’s the gist of it from Kiva:

How do Lending Teams work?:
Members of Kiva Lending Teams continue lending as individuals, but they have the option to count each loan they make towards the overall impact of one of their teams.

I created a team called “Bloggers”. Since the whole thing is in beta you have to be invited by someone else already with access to team lending. If you want to join or get access to team lending, leave a comment to this post and type in your e-mail in the appropriate field (your e-mail will only be visible to me) and I’ll send out an invite.

You’ll get a nifty RSS badge on your lender page like mine (scroll down to teams).

edit: Lending teams were made public. Click here for the link to the bloggers team. Open to anybody to join, from bloggers to people who read blogs!

As many of my regulars know I’m a big fan of Kiva.org. Ending world poverty is a near impossible task but it isn’t hard to loan capital to those that wish to lift themselves out of poverty.

So why am I funding $4,000+ worth of loans? Simply put, it’s all the money I have excluding my portfolio or emergency fund. This is money sitting in my checking account that’s been funding my partying and misc other activities. So the real question is why all my money?

I need to know that feeling again. How it feels to be broke. How it feels to have no girlfriend and no money. How it feels like to be “hungry and foolish” again. I’m going back to start.

Hopefully it’ll motivate me like it has in the past to find ways to make more money. Instead of sticking all my money in a CD or something I figure locking it up in Kiva loans would be a more charitable thing to do also. I’ll accept the 2.2% default risk for the greater good to help others lift themselves out of poverty.

So far I have contributed $1,175 in helping fund loans. Every couple of days I’ll look for loans and causes I like and fund more loans until I reach $4,000 or so.