I wanted to provide a sizzling hot preview of a feature coming soon to the Kiva website!
This fall, Kiva will be launching a new feature that allows Kiva users to create or join lending teams. Each lending team - company, school, religious organization, family, etc - will have a page on the Kiva website that will track and summarize the lending activity of all individual lenders associated with that team.
The way Kiva works is not changing. You will still make loans as an individual. Now you will have the added option of teaming up with likeminded lenders, inviting friends to join your team, and having your loans count towards a team total. Our hope is that lending teams will provide an easier way for Kiva enthusiasts to spread the word at school, work, and elsewhere.
As with many passionate Kiva users, I have told friends, family, co-workers, strangers and pets about Kiva. After a few minutes of explanation, I usually hear something to the effect of, “that is so cool!” or “what a great idea!” or “woof!” However, enthusiasm for the Kiva concept does not always translate into visiting the Kiva website and supporting an entrepreneur. Lending teams is one of the ways we are hoping to bridge that gap and provide an easier way for potential lenders to take the plunge.
The lending teams feature is part of a wider effort to help our supporters get involved and involve others in a meaningful way. Our vision is to provide marketing materials, lesson plans, fundraising ideas and other resources for our active, grassroots base of supporters. Kiva operates on a simple, but powerful premise—a loan of $25 can change a life. We are excited to watch people come together in companies, schools, families and elsewhere to help combat poverty.
2008-08-14
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6 comments:
Thanks for an extremely well written (and funny, "woof!") explanation of the goals behind team lending, which I think are spot on for the purposes mentioned! Thank you for providing this new feature. I'm very much looking forward to it.
-Scott
http://kiva.org/lender/saabnet
This is an awesome idea - it's something I have thought about for my project spot.us - but have decided to put off until I have a more robust site. It makes perfect sense though - go kiva!
The idea is perfect. One thing that should be considered in roll out is the ability to add existing loans to a group. I cannot find this option anywhere.
We are a small exclusive buyer agency company in real estate and I've been trying to figure out how to get our past clients and our national organization involved with Kiva...and this solves that problem. Two questions:
1. Can the money we contribute get "credited" to multiple groups? This would allow the formation of both past client and national org groups.
2. Can the money we've already put in the Kiva system (almost $30,000 I'm proud to say) get credited to these groups. This would really help draw participation from the national organization.
I'm happy Kiva is doing this. I sent a concept/idea similar to this to Kiva a little over a year ago and would love to know if it had an impact on creating lending teams...
Lila
Hi norris--
Thanks for your comment. In response to your questions:
1. Each loan can only be credited to one team. One way around this would be to create individual accounts for clients and have them join the lending team of your national org.
2. We are not including existing loans in the new lending team portfolios. We wanted to have a level playing field for old and new users and this option was also less technically demanding for the engineering team.
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