What is Kiva?
Kiva is as an intermediary website of microfinance for its lenders and borrowers through local microfinance institutions which they call field partners. It is a non-profit organization with a mission to connect people to fight poverty in a sustainable way. Leveraging the internet and a worldwide network of microfinance institutions, Kiva designs loans as affordable as $25 to let individuals to give a hand for those in needs to change better lives.
How Kiva works
- Kiva connects with existing Microfinance Institutions to know their local area and borrowers and to become its field partners.
- Field Partners disburse loans first as soon as the borrowers are needed. And the Field Partner collects entrepreneur stories, pictures and loan details and uploads them to Kiva. Volunteers who work for Kiva edit and translate the loan requests and publish them to Kiva.org.
- Lenders browse loan requests which can be filtered by gender, by sector, group loan or individual. After lenders selected which entrepreneurs they would like to fund, they can fund as little as $25 and as much as the entire amount of the loan as well.
- Kiva Disburses Lenders’ Funds to the Field Partner.
- Entrepreneurs can repay loans according to the schedule with any interest due which is set by the field partner for their operating cost. Kiva doesn’t earn any interest to its Field Partners and does not provide interest to lenders. There’s an option to cover currency losses as well.
- Kiva return lenders repayments which they can withdraw or make another loan.
The Story of a Kiva Loan
Latest Statistics as of April 8, 2012
| Total value of all loans made through Kiva: | $301,270,025 |
| Number of Kiva Users: | 1,158,998 |
| Number of Kiva Users who have funded a loan: | 747,611 |
| Number of countries represented by Kiva Lenders: | 219 |
| Number of entrepreneurs that have received a loan through Kiva: | 765,239 |
| Number of loans that have been funded through Kiva: | 392,095 |
| Percentage of Kiva loans which have been made to women entrepreneurs: | 80.47% |
| Number of Kiva Field Partners: | 145 |
| Number of countries Kiva Field Partners are located in: | 60 |
| Current repayment rate (all partners): | 98.90% |
| Average loan size (This is the average amount loaned to an individual Kiva Entrepreneur. Some loans – group loans – are divided between a group of borrowers.): | $392.32 |
| Average total amount loaned per Kiva Lender (includes reloaned funds): | $260.46 |
| Average number of loans per Kiva Lender: | 7.96 |
The Use of Social Media Application (Web 2.0 Technologies)
Currently, Kiva has deployed the following social media applications to facilitate the lending process between the lenders, field partners and borrowers.
1) Social Plugins – Facebook, LinkedIN, Twitter, Youtube, RSS Feeds
Kiva uses Facebook Connect to make easier to log in or sign up for Kiva, and it also allows members to share their loans with friends by posting them on their Facebook feed. Kiva lives on Twitter and Youtube as well.
2) Blogs
Kiva keeps blogs to update entrepreneurs profiles and their businesses, to feature lenders, to post fielde partners’ latest news and to highlight other fellows’ feeds.
3) Groupware – Teams
Kiva allows lenders to join a Lending Team and get to know Kiva’s community. Lending Teams are self-organized groups where members connect with each other and rally around shared lending goals. Lenders used to group by country, by school, by interest and so on. A lender can be a member of one or more than one team. This groupware facilitates social interaction between lenders and it makes more meaningful existence of oneself in the community.
4) Wiki – for developers
Kiva Wiki is a place for developers who are trying to improve Kiva platform. There are some areas one can look up.
- Application Ideas – to collect some of the ideas from friends, users, staff, and other developers to help get the gears turning on their own application.
- Developer Support- get listed on Kiva.org, learn about GetSatisfaction
- Open Source Projects- check out what’s in development and help collobrate
- Toolkits, Sample Code – A list of code contributed by the community around the API. Contribute or use to kick start your own project.
- Events- Join us to build Kiva and meet other do-good techies
Developers Wiki is aimed at making the plans for developers as transparent as possible.
Kiva Approach To Socially Capable Environment Using Web 2.0 Principles
- Create an “Addictive” User Experience
- Be “Radically Transparent”
- “Crowdsource” against constraints
- Build in “increasing returns on data”
- Reach “The Long Tail”
1) Create an “Addictive” User Experience
Kiva was designed the integration of easy-to-use functionality of Amazon and full-of-fun feature of Facebook to create an addictive user experience.
2) Be “Radically Transparent”
Kiva management team is quite transparent in usage of overheads, data inaccuracy from field partners, delays of repayments and so on. That transparency is leading to authenticity which can be built trust as well over the time.
3) “Crowdsource” against Constraints
Crowdsourcing or crowdfunding allows Kiva and its fieldpartners to overcome big constrainsts. Kiva fellow program offers an opportunities to contribute individual’s skills to work with microfinance institutions. They expand Kiva’s impact by building key relationships and transferring critical knowledge to their host MFI, help Kiva develop sustainable practices. Another type of voluteer in Kiva is translator. They are helping to translate entrepreneur’s profile from native languages to English. And Kiva has great partners as well including Microsoft which supports funding for field research and development, Paypal which provides free payment processing, Google which offer free adwords and 25% of traffic and many more.
4) Build in “increasing returns on data”
Kiva, at the time being, is most leading platform in online microfinance sector and most reliable in terms of data integrity which makes Kiva largest database in microfinance investments.
5) Reach “The Long Tail”
Kiva platform aggregate and deliver risk in long tail model. Kiva lenders value social return and tolerate risk rather than institutions. The minimum loan size which is $25 ensures risk distribution across investors.
This is the approach that Kiva deploys utilizing the power of Web 2.0 and social media.
In Literature
One of the papers studied about Microlending had analyzed the use of Web 2.0 technologies in online P2P lending. The study was carried out analysis on six online microlending websites to find out Web 2.0 techniques have led to a reduction in interest costs or to an increase of credit availability and to encourage mutual exchanges and cooperation between peers to lend and borrow money. Shuen (2008) mentions that Web 2.0 creates democratized innovation, crowdsourcing, eco-system platform innovation and recombinant innovation. And blogs, chats and online communities can reduce the cost in a number of ways by automating procurement process, interoperability and multi-user communications; auctions to get best prices; collaborative planning leading to reduction of inventories.
Web 2.0, nowsaday, transforms the world into one collaborative environments and its tools facilitate mass virtual collaboration to solve a problem or to improve an operation (Tapscott & Williams, 2006). Blogs, for instance, can likely bring organization and their members together in a way that improves both organization image and bottom line (Scoble & Shel, 2006). Dell has deployed several sites that support user-generated content and has provided its customers and community a voice (Armano, 2007). Many companies like Ernst & Young, recruit new employees primarily on Facebook (Hollis, 2007). This Web 2.0 technologies let individuals to form by themselves into groups, social networks and peer to peer collaborations what can be called as “crowd sourcing” (Tapscott & Williams, 2006).
The extent that individuals can reach and add value to their communities has grown together with the growth of high-speed internet access and the availability of easy to use web technologies (Parameswaran and Whinston, 2007). Kiva has a developing platform called build.kiva to enhance existing web infrastructure with volunteer developers in the social computing environment. Web 2.0 technologies which applied in development areas can be named as Development 2.0. Its practice enforces networked social interaction and data generation, reaching the ‘long tail’ of the world’s poor. It is the effort to improve sustainable human-centered development employing transparency, collaboration and citizen participation (Carlman, 2010).
How social media will benefit Kiva and its Users
The social media has helped both Kiva and its users in many different ways. The users of Kiva can be categorized in two main categories which are lenders and end-borrowers.
For the lenders
At the side of lenders, it has potentially support lender’s social status and identity since the social plugins on Kiva allows to update their activities in their social profiles. The lending team facility also provides social network structure in itself so that lenders can expand their existing network to larger communities which share common interests. Lenders can easily add value to their webpages with gadgets, widgets, and mashups that Kiva volunteers have been developed. Kiva blog is most effective channel to deliver transparent information to lenders and suppots in building trust.
For the End-Borrowers
Social media has benefitted to Kiva borrowers, in other words, poor entrepreneurs around the world in indirect way. With the crowding sourcing power of social media or Web 2.0 technologies, they can tap on incredible fundings which their local microfinance institutions could not afford. They can borrow a small capital to start their businesses very easily and very instantly.
For Kiva
The platform that Kiva has developed has a strong sense of social media and utilized these networks to its advantage to offer fund pool for the poor. With its blog communities, mobile applications, social plugins for Facebook and WordPress users, Wikis for its developers, Kiva has reached to global community to put them work together to change better lives.
Social Applications Integration
1) Lending Team Playbook
Lending team playbook is recruiting campaign for your Kiva team. It compiles with tools and tips. As a crowdsouring webiste, recruiting and branching out is crucial to sustain the growth. Kiva approach is not direct recruiting to individuals whereas it is letting members of a team to branch out their network. The followings are available online tools Kiva currently provided on playbook.
- Kiva provided direct URL to your profile page as well as your team page. Members can use this URL anywhere they could expose to their friends.
- Members can share Kiva link on their Facebook and Twitter.
- And they can use email as well. Kiva provides instant invitation email while members can draft themselves also.
- In Kiva invites function, members can see they are invited by who, number of friends who accept your invites and reminding function for their invitations as well.
Signing off with a message you care about every time you send an email can make more awareness from your friends.
KivaFriends
Kivafriends is a forum space to discuss and share about your Kiva experiences with your Kiva friends.
Proposal to Enhance Kiva Lending Team Playbook
I would like to propose more powerful recruiting tools beyong these current ones which is emerging facebook app, “BranchOut”. BranchOut is aimed for professional career network to find the job using social media. But for Kiva, I would like to extract the potentials of branching out the network to recruit Kiva team members. Since Kiva already has direct login facility from Facebook, it can easily integrated with BranchOut on Kiva website as well as Kiva Facebook page.
BranchOut currently has two aspects to expand one’s network, “People” and “Jobs”. Users can find people as well as jobs. To integrate with Kiva, both aspects can be useful in terms of creating larger Kiva community. What it means here is that Kiva community right now is composed with lenders, borrowers, field partners, and volunteers. That community can be enhanced with two potential groups. First one is professionals who are working as social entrepreneurs, NGOs which also support working poors, those non-profit organization which are fighting poverty, and social enterprises and second group is Kiva members who are social-minded people adn might want to find careers in social work. Branchout can play a part to connect those organizations who are looking for socially talented people and people who are participating in Kiva even with voluntary basis. In that way, Kiva community can be enhanced as a larger one.
The interface will look like the existing BranchOut page which can be a part of Kiva member page. Those who might want to find the jobs in social work or social financial industry can add their social skills to their profile. Kiva member profile can be used as a useful image in the resume a well.
Technical Implementations
Kiva has launched open-source API profile for its developers and lets them develop the next big Kiva social application. Kiva uses its API conventions on RESTful web services. In Kiva world, the objects are Loans, Lenders, Field Partners, and Lending Teams. So, if you to fetch data about thses objects, you need to make a HTTP GET request accompanied by the proper URI for the loan about which you want information. To create a loan or a team, you can use POST request. This RESTful nature make easy to mashup with any other applications.
An example of simplified API response in JSON:
{
“people”:
[
{“name”:”Jeremy”,”id”:2},
{“name”:”Roma”,”id”:38},
{“name”:”Zvi”,”id”:21}
]
}
GET Method for Teams
GET /teams/:ids
Returns detailed information about one or more lending teams.
Example
http://api.kivaws.org/v1/teams/2.json
Parameters
ids(list of numbers)
Required. A list of team IDs for which to return team detail.
- Max list items: 20
app_id(string)
The application id in reverse DNS notation.
Response
team_detail – HTML, JSON, XML,RSS
*Source:http://build.kiva.org/api#GET*|teams|:ids
Kiva BranchOut on Facebook
This is Branchout app installed on Kiva Facebook page. Kiva can take advantage of tapping professional network in Branchout for its job opennings as well as to expand Kiva users network linking other Facebook users via Branchout.
User Participation
The motives to mashup with BranchOut is to connect the organizations who are looking for socially talented people and the people who are looking for such a organization to employ them. And Kiva has to market for those members who are actively participated on Kiva and for volunteers who contribute their skills and efforts on Kiva with some recommendations. For example, for a member, if he or she reaches to certain amount making loans, Kiva should confer something like a badge with recommendation letter describing total loans that this member made and the benefits and life changes of entrepreneurs whom this member funded. In this way, Kiva can encourage members to participate on Kiva. For the organizations’ side, Kiva needs to send out referrals for those active members to potential organization, and persuade their participation.
How the integration can support organization’s objectives
The objective of Kiva is to connect people through lending to alleviate poverty. Integrating with BranchOut and expanding to potentials network can make increase in capital and can be more attractive so that Kiva can achieve what it aims for.
Issues and Problems to address
The issue to bear in mind is that Kiva needs to focus on to crowdsource the capital, not let Branchout integration to deviate from current trends. To address this issue, Kiva has to approve participation organizations making sure to be social organizations.
2) Kiva WordPress Widgtet
This is Kiva wordpress widget to embed in the blog which allows you to show off your generosity to your auidence. It requires Kiva username which is not the email address that used to login, it is the one that in the Kiva URL. This widget retrieves randomly from loans that user has made from the Kiva API, and displays a summary of it. If the loans are private, it will not show them.
This widget allows users to make awareness of what is Kiva and supports them to recruit more friends. It reflects user’s identity and good image and to let users in-touch with Kiva. It is better to have other widgets which can be embedded in other platform as well. For example, blogspot, Ning, Twitter and so on. Other widgets such as displaying Kiva gifts and Kiva Cards that users purchased for their friends.
3) KivaFriends
KivaFriends is currently a forum space in which Kiva users can discuss and share about your experience on Kiva each other. But it should be enhanced with online social applications to go next level. Becasue it is quite useful medium to listen the voice of users and Kiva can maintain its growth by addressing users’ needs. Since it is just a forum, some users do not appeal to hang around. It can be integrated with Ning platform to establish fully capable social network with attractive graphical interface.
Main Features of KivaFriends on Ning Platform
Instant Messaging
To get more interactiveness between users.
User Content Generation
Users can upload their photos, videos and the documents that they want to share with their friends.
Social Integration
With Youtube, Twitter, Flickr and so on.
Classroom
It is for those who want to study about microfinance and actual work flow of Kiva funding. It should be included lecture videos on finance and inspirational stories such as Muhammad Yunus, Kiva founder Jessica Jackley and so on.
Revenue Genarating Option
This option will allow revenue generating with advertisements which can be subscription fee for Ning platform and other operating cost to sustain KivaFriends site.
This is KivaFriends current home page.
References
Armano, D. (2007). It’s the Conversation Economy, Stupid. Business Week Online, pp. 11-11.
Hollis, T. (2007). Social Media Advertising: No Direct Response Proposition. ClickZ Experts.
Parameswaran, M., & Whinston, A. B. (2007). Social Computing : An Overview Social Computing : An Overview. Communications of the Association for Information Systems, 19, 762-780.
Scoble, R., & Israel, S. (2006). Naked conversations: How blogs are changing the way businesses talk with customers. Hoboken, N.J: John Wiley.
Shah, P. (2008). Applying “Web 2.0” Principles to Microfinance [PowerPoint slides]. Retrieved from http://www.slideshare.net/mrpremal/online-giving-marketplaces-kiva-presentation-presentation
Shuen, A. (2008). Web 2.0: A Strategy Guide. Sebastopol, CA: O’Reilly Media Inc.