Wednesday, October 15, 2008

Thank you for supporting Kiva

Kiva could not have achieved 3rd place and won a $300K grant in the American Express Members Project competition without the help of a legion of dedicated supporters. We can't thank you enough for distinguishing us out of a field of nearly 1,200 worthy organizations.

This grant money will help Kiva to enable $6 million in loans to an additional 12,000 developing world entrepreneurs over the next ten years.

In the final two rounds of voting, Kiva received a whopping 28,187 votes from Amex cardholders across the United States! Thanks to our supporters truly showing up in force, we nearly overtook the second place team in the last 4 days of voting when we amassed nearly 4,000 votes.

We would like to especially thank the following people and organizations. We truly appreciate every email you sent, newsletter blurb you wrote, video you posted, and happy hour you hosted:

Ashoka Foundation

Bain and Company
Blog Action Day
Brian Ford of Cisco
Ernst & Young
Involver
Intel
Joe and Kiva Friends
Kiva Fellows and Alumni
Kiva Volunteers
Ned.com
Ogilvy
Oliver Wyman
Red Bricks Media
TechSoup
W. K. Kellogg Foundation
Yahoo

Happy Hour Hosts:

Aditi Chokshi
Erick Hong
Joe Thomas
Purvi Parikh
Sabrina Aggarwal
Shelby Clark
Sophia Li
Tanaya Parikh

The American Express competition highlighted once again how many sincerely dedicated, energetic, and creative supporters that Kiva has. We feel so lucky to be a part of an organization that attracts such incredible people.

Thank you again!