Kiva growth – check the metrics

As they say, a picture is worth a lot of words – 11 million in this case. The graph shows Kiva‘s growth since founding in 2005 – it has made more than $11 million in microloans. The money comes from more than 100,00 lenders and has been packaged into about 17,000 loans. The payback rate [...]

Microlending. Good for them but not for us.

Wednesday’s WSJ ran a story titled, “Silicon Valley Moguls Support Microlenders, Just not in the US,” in which the profitability of social good ventures is highlighted as the central question. Because of higher costs and legally-required lower interest rates, US-based microlending programs can do a lot of good, but they can’t do it at a [...]