On October 2nd, 2009 I set out a goal to make one Kiva loan a month for twelve months straight.  One year on here are a few thoughts about the process and what happens from here.

As an entrepreneur the hockey-stick graph representing my lending activity is sufficiently pleasing.  If only my first company had the same growth curve! 

Throughout the year I experimented with different ways of lending…Kiva Gift Cards for holidays & birthdays, setting up a “Socially Responsible College Fund” & auto-lending. 

Turns out gift cards are hit or miss, sometimes I got the impression that the people I sent them to thought I was trying to foist my right-wing, European socialist, make-the-world-a-better-place agenda upon them. So now I only send cards to people who I know enjoy Kiva. 

The College Fund is a great idea but we ran into issues with certain relatives who didn’t quite get the concept.  They were concerned about people not paying back even though I explained traditional microfinance has a very low risk profile (currently my portfolio has a 0.33% delinquency & 0.00% default).  Eventually we convinced most relatives to forgo the traditional Birthday Bonds and send Kiva gift certificates.  Thanks!

Auto-lending takes the fun out of Kiva!  Repayments get posted to your Kiva account on the 15th of every month and within a relatively short period it became one of the most enriching days of the month.  In addition to my standard one-loan per month over time I was able to fund 6-7 (and rising) additional loans per month with money that was repaid.

Personally I think Kiva’s Map View is a bit lame…but after a bit of tinkering with Google’s Geomap visualisation API I was able to pull something together which not only demonstrates the breadth of my lending activities but also magnitude. (Hint: If you’re playing around with the Geomaps API there is a huge performance hit if you use country names as opposed to latitude/longitude!)

There has been a some press recently about the the emergence for-profit funds and securitization of microfinance portfolios.  There has been particular emphasis on the usurious rates that some firms are charging (upwards of 20%-50%). While I think this behavior is abhorrent, I do think there is scope for Kiva to provide functionality which allowed LIBOR+(1%-10%) interest rates on non-Islamic loans. 

What’s next?  Well, Kiva has become somewhat of a habit so I have no intention of stopping or slowing down my activities on the platform.  I would love to find new ways to broaden my social impact, so I’ve started looking at things like Kickstarter and Indiegogo.  Give me a shout if you know of other cool social impact web platforms.