Proverbs

Kiva's Twitter is in large part a proverb-sharing device.  There's too much inspiration and too little Don Rickles for my taste, but that seems to be how people communicate in this milieu.

They evidently aren't getting these things off the top of their head, because they want you to contribute.  Here's a form.

I've already offered my contribution:

"I teach the truth to the youth.  I say, 'Hey youth, here's the truth.'  Then I start wearing bulletproof."
-Ol' Dirty Bastard

App!

Now you fancy types with your high-falutin iPhones never have to be away from Kiva.  Here's the Kiva Alerts app.  It is, and I quote, "a super quick application that allows you to check the latest loan requests on Kiva.org. Loan requests on Kiva.org get fulfilled very quickly and we update open loan requests every few minutes so that you can find the loans of your interest quickly as they appear."

So there you go.  My phone can't handle something like this, but maybe you'll enjoy it.

I'm typing this on a Tandy.

Outpacing, Outsourcing

Julia's outpacing me to an embarrassing degree.  A really embarrassing degree, actually.  But it's not a contest, right?  RIGHT?!

I haven't watched this yet, but it might be interesting.  How about you watch it first and let me know if I should bother.

Misleading

Is Kiva actually misleading?  Here's another disillusionment victim who thinks so.  And once you get past the fact that this thing is on a site that's about 60% web ads, and the fact that they split up a 492-word piece into two pages so you have to look at all the ads twice, there's still not much of a point.

I was watching one of my favorite channels recently, USA...

Wait, what?  Do people keep lists of their favorite channels?  And if they do, don't they have the sense to keep that fact to themselves?

...when the commercial for Character Approval came on. This is USA's program to honor innovators, artists, and anyone who is trying to bring fresh ideas to the world. I like the idea of this program but I think USA should be a little more careful about who they claim to be a character. 

Well, yeah.  They might find themselves sliding down peoples' favorite channels lists.  I mean, not mine.  After Silk Stalkings, they can do whatever they want and still make my top five.  But other peoples'. (By the way, when I copy/pasted that bit of concentrated inanity, it stuck a damn web ad in my blog.  So we know this guy's doing it for the right reasons at least.)

My introduction to Kiva.org was made via the USA channel...

I'm starting to feel sorry for this guy.  He can't believe the USA channel would do this to him.  It's just heartbreaking.  Although he is pretending his name's "Vincent Van Noir," so maybe I don't feel sorry for him.

...and like many people I thought, "Wow! What a great way to help poor people." [He's a mind-reader, too.] So I went to the Kiva website and started nosing around and quickly became dismayed and angry at what I found. Kiva claims to be a middleman, so to speak, between poor people around the world and lenders. But this is not exactly true.

Vince is actually about to detail in what ways this is exactly true.  Let's watch together.

First, you, give your money to Kiva and then Kiva gives your money to a micro lender. This person or agency then sets up a loan using your money for the intended recipient.

Is there a term for someone who does that?  Taking money from one party and funneling it to another?  Oh yeah - middleman!  I don't know if that's a world record for self-contradiction, but it ain't bad.

Now this loan, because it is a micro loan, charges the recipient as high as 35% interest (Kiva, 2010). 

When you're arguing with someone, and he's making his case so badly that you have to step in and help him, that's a situation where a better man than I am would back off and go do something else.  But I can't possibly be a better man than I am.  Mr. "Van Noir," people aren't so upset about the 35% interest rate.  They're upset about the 60+% interest rates.  I see from your little endnote there that you did scrupulous research, but I can see how you'd miss this.  You'd have to do . . . I don't know, a Google search or something to find that out.  Arcane stuff.

Vinny doesn't mention any of the possible explanations for these interest rates.  I assume that, say, the cost of doing business in countries with a difficult business environment or the short terms of the loans have been considered and rejected so soundly that he didn't feel them worth mentioning.

What really burns me up is that Kiva acts like it is doing the world a service by aiding poor people in climbing out of poverty. Arguably this organization might have helped many of these people with loans but when you have nothing, anything is better (and that 25% interest payment seems alright.) Kiva might think it is helping people but the truth is that the people receiving these loans have to pay back large amounts of interest and the use of micro lending might only be sinking these individuals further into a new form of poverty, known well to many Americans as credit debt.

Those are some pretty bold statements. His idea's about the "truth" of the microfinance is idiosyncratic, at least. Seems like the kind of thing you might want to back up with facts.

Unless, that is, you're a mercenary hack trying to squeeze out (almost) 500 words so that your mercenary hack bosses can coat it in lucrative advertisements and try to trick people into thinking it's worth reading.

Not only are Vin's arguments incoherent, silly, and completely undefended, nothing mentioned in this article is a surprise to anyone who's done even the most cursory investigation of Kiva or microfinance in general, which should be everyone who's committed money to such a project.

A Dissenting Voice

This guy hates Kiva.  Basically it comes down to interest rates and "neoliberalism," and one of those critiques is probably reasonable.

Add to this the fact that there appear to be no controls on interest rates even contemplated, and the fact that the first world neoliberal braintrusts who love this model so much are treating the high interest rates like the dirty little secret of microfinance and hiding it is much as possible, and the disaster that increasing the developing world's dependence on microfinance much more would be becomes all too clear.

It actually is harder to find anything about interest on Kiva's site than I remembered it being.  I'm guessing the vast majority of lenders don't do the scrupulous research that characterizes the typical dude with a blog.  So maybe they are playing that down.

But that's enough to convince me of anything.  I mean, we don't to make the perfect the enemy of the good, if I can be permitted to use a tiresome cliche.  And when it comes to choice between neoliberalism and people who say cusses about neoliberalism, I'm giving benefit of the doubt to the former.

In other news, an odd blog has come to the same conclusion I did: Vittana is a "cool internet site."  I was totally ahead of the curve on this one.

Wokai

Another one!  I might have to work up a checklist for the Kivaesque.  In fact, I'll do that right now.  If you're a Kivaesque microfinance organization, please put a check next to each of the following characteristics that applies to your non-profit organization:

1. Personal profiles of loans recipients
2. Green color scheme
3. Botanical logo
4. One word name that means something meaningful in a foreign language
5. All that other microfinancey stuff that I'm not going to go into right now

On that scale, Kiva of course scores a 5/5.  Vittana also gets a perfect score.  United Prosperity gets a 3.5/5 - they don't have the fancy name, and their financial model is different enough that they get a half a point.

Wokai works exclusively in China, getting loans to rural entrepreneurs.  It scores 4/5 on the Kivaesque Scale: the logo's green, the profiles are there, and the name means "I start" in Chinese, and the logo is almost perfectly generic.

Their actual process differs meaningfully from the Kiva model, however.  You make a loan, and once that loan's paid back, you can "redirect" it to another project.  You maintain this control over the money for three cycles, after which it disappears into the slavering maw of operational expenses.  Once you send in the money, you're not getting it back.  You do get to write it off on your taxes, though.

So . . . I don't know about this one.  Unless you're really eager to help out in China specifically, I don't see how Wokai's a better choice than any of your other alternatives.

One other thing I'm wondering about (and I took only a cursory look at the site, so maybe I missed it): what is this organization's relationship with the Chinese government?  They can't be doing this without official approval, and I gather that the central authorities are a bit touchy when it comes to the plight of their countryside.  We've all seen the travails Google's gone through in their dealings with the regime, and even the Ultimate Fighting Championship is skittish about it.  I'd be interested to hear how Wokai is dealing with that obstacle.

Loan #4: 5 De Junio Group

Here's the 5 De Junio Group from Bolivia.

This is a good one, based on several elements of my half-formed notions of how microfinance works.  Half-formed might be generous, actually.

• It's a group of entrepreneurs, which generally works out better than an individual.
• The interest rate is reasonable.  This is a pretty contentious issues among people who worry about this kind of thing - microloans tend to have high rates attached to them.  Too high, according to some.  I'm not convinced one way or the other, but why not err on the side of lowness?
• According to their profile, this group is well acquainted with microloans.

But look, I'm not going to lie to you and say the bowler hats had nothing to do with it.  Thanks to the presence in central South America of some railroad-affiliated Brits in the early 20th century, Bolivian women wear bowler hats.  It's not a fad; it's not some kind of counter-intuitive hipster fashion statement.  It's for real, and it's awesome.  It's also quite eye-catching when one is scrolling through open loans on Kiva.

See also this by now pretty old NYT article about Bolivian female wrestlers.

U-S-A!!!

One of the appeals of using through Kiva is the exotic flavor of the lending options.  Browsing through the list of recipients is an education in the world's lesser known nations.  I mean, Kyrgyzstan?  I had to look up three times how to spell it, and I'm still pretty sure I got it wrong.  I did learn that Kyrgyzstan is the Switzerland is Central Asia, and that's exactly the kind of fun fact that ensures I never have an awkward conversation.

Sometimes, though, you have to look inside and explore the most exotic country of all: America.

There was an article in the Post last week about some dude with a dog-walking business who couldn't get a loan from the usual sources (banks, uncles, mafia), so he hit up the Latino Economic Development Corp. for a microloan.  Apparently banks won't bother with anything under $200,000, and it takes a lot less than that to put together something called "Dog Paws 'n Cat Claws."  So good for that guy.

Kiva doesn't have a lot for American entrepreneurs.  Right now the only one up there is Lazaro, a Miami barber who needs ten grand.

There are, apparently, a few good reasons for this.  American loan-seekers generally need more money than Kyrgyzstaners or whomever, and we can get credit cards.  So maybe this just isn't a good environment for microlending.

But the only Kiva partner offering anything in this country - Accion USA - is doing well enough to have an imitator spam site that tries to steal your credit card info, so there must be something going on.  At this point, it seems, like gladiatorial contests and the fourth declension, to be a largely Latin phenomenon.  But that could change, and maybe in the near future it won't require a field trip to Azerbaijan to prove that you're not getting ripped off.

It's Not A Contest, But . . .

Not everyone lending on Kiva is a lone wolf like me, playing by his own rules and daring The Man to do something about it.  Some prefer the squishy embrace of the like-minded to the wind-swept loneliness that is my only companion, and those people band together into lending communities.  The way Kiva arranges the list of these groups - alphabetically in order of money - leads me to believe that they want these communities to fight it out for ultimate microloan supremacy.

It just so happens that the top two groups are diametrically opposed to each other.  Like Guelph vs. Ghibelline and Jet vs. Shark, here we have Atheist vs. Not Atheist.

The leading group, at least in total money donated, is the Atheists, Agnostics, Skeptics, Freethinkers, Secular Humanists and the Non-Religious.  That's a pretty wide range of outlooks, ranging from full-on Spaghetti Monster sneerers to "spiritual but not religious" free spirits, all united under a common cause and a pretty rad logo.

Did the Skeptics and Secular Humanists get a say in what letter to use?

#2 is (as you probably already guessed) the Kiva Christians, who are prompted by James 1:27 to start doling out the moolah.  I quote (and I totally knew this off the top of my head):

Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world.

Not bad.  Maybe I'll get that under the Kiva logo I had tattooed on my chest last week.

Of course, a competition like this isn't decided by Bible quotations and scarlet letters.  Let's go to the stats!

• The Atheists (that's the shorthand we're using - no offense to the mere skeptics) started up on August 28, 2008.  The Christians didn't get underway until August 31, 2008.  Thus, the Atheists are three whole days better.
• Atheists: $1,659,700.00. Christians: $1,012,325.00.  The Atheists win this one by the sticker price of the world's fastest street-legal car.
• But what about on a per-Believer-or-non-Believer basis?  The Christians win this one, $268 to $195.
• Who has the better website?  The Atheist one is actually about their lending activities, and it even has a poll to figure out how many of them fall into each category of their endless name.  The Christians' site is about Jesus in general rather than microfinance.

Verdict: Hell, I don't know.  Let's call it a draw and also everyone wins just for participating, because that's the kind of thing this is.  It's not a deathmatch like Norway vs. Sweden or 101 Cookbooks vs. Beer Goggles.

The Score

"Charity" is derived from the Latin word caritas, which means "charity."  That's it for the fact portion of this post.  The rest is uninformed cynicism.

I'm wary of charities.  I have a feeling that it's a matter of perspective.  Ripping someone off when you're pretending to help orphans seems so much worse than employing any of the various other pretexts for getting at someone's money that it sticks in your mind and serves as a barrier to charitable action.

Still, there's plenty to watch out for when it comes to charities, unless a whole two hours of internet research lied to me just now.  We all know about the Wyclef Jean thing, right?  People send his Haiti-oriented charity millions of dollars, only to find out that it's paying him exorbitant appearance fees and whatnot?  It wasn't an isolated incident. An English breast cancer charity, for example, spent "less than 10p in every pound" (can anyone translate that for me?) on its mission while paying a fundraiser it employed millions of £, which I gather is some kind of fancy cursive-looking money.

I'm not even talking about actual fraud.  That thing where you pay yourself a fat salary and still get to call yourself a charity because of you give five percent of the proceeds to orphans is completely legal (as far as I know) and apparently not unusual.  I'm not saying that all of them do it.  I'm not saying most of them do it.  I'm not even saying any of them do it.  Wait, no - I am saying that last one.

So that's why I'm suspicious.  Kiva (and I hope this part doesn't wind up sounding like a commercial for them) assures us that every dime lent to an entrepreneur goes to that entrepreneur.  They don't use it to cover their costs, and they don't apply it to some other, similar project that they decide needs it more.

Long story short: Hearing stories about crooked charities makes me think Kiva is rad.  The folks at Bancocomunal Nacer can thank Wyclef Jean for my twenty-five bucks.  And for The Score - man, that's a great record.

Fun

Why Kiva?  Here's why I picked it, and please note that the emphasis on my personal convenience and amusement means I'm being honest:

• Microloans work better than charity.  That's what they tell me, anyway.  I seem to recall doing some research back when I signed up, but I don't remember specifics.  Maybe I should redo that research.  And then blog about it!
• Kiva is really easy to use. Like I said, I'm not charitably inclined, either by habit or genetics, so I'm not going to stick around when things get tough.  Or even, you know, slightly annoying.  Other than the hassles of PayPal, which I already have to deal with in order to buy myself things, it's the easiest thing in the world.  Checking my email is tougher.
• You get your money back!  Most of the time - something like 97%.  Once you can that money back, you can reinvest it, you can donate it to Kiva, or you can just stick it back in your PayPal and resume buying yourself trinkets on eBay.
• You know what's fun?  Fun, that's what.  And Kiva is fun.  Rather than handing your loot off to some organization and letting them decided what to do with it, you get to decide where it goes. And then you get to follow along!

I need to expand on that last point, because that's the main reason I'm doing this.  Every part of the process is fun, which is, as we already discussed, fun.  Picking your recipient, seeing who else has thrown in for the same cause, seeing the little loan bar fill up - it's like playing a very slow-paced video game!  And it's cheaper, as long as you only do it twice.

From there, it only gets better!  And by that, I basically mean that you get your money back.  Imagine that - you send your money out on a special mission to, say, buy cows for someone in Tajikistan.  It goes all the way to Central Asia, pays for part of a cow, and then returns to you, safe and sound.  Everyone wins!  Except the cow, I guess.

If it sounds like I'm joking, let me assure you that when I got my first installment of $6.25 from my initial loan, it felt like Christmas, my birthday, and another Christmas all rolled into one.  It wasn't the actual remuneration, it was the reassurance that the whole thing works.  My little contribution apparently helped out the good people at the Bancocomunal Nacer to the point that they could start sending out money to the complete strangers who'd sent money to the them a few months before.  And when I get the rest of my 25 bucks back, I can just plow that into some other worth endeavor.  Everyone wins!  Once again, except the cows.

An Explanation

After years of never doing nothin' for nobody - in fact, actually doing everything I could to make life worse for other people - I decided to change it up like Scrooge on Christmas morning and start buying geese for everyone.  Metaphorically.

In making a choice for my metaphorical goose-chute, I settled on Kiva, an organization that facilitates microloans to entrepreneurs in other countries.  I thought about describing the Spirit and Purpose of Kiva, but all I'd be doing is copy and pasting from their About section.  That's right here if you want to check it out for yourself.  Go ahead and skip the first part, which is 100% pablum, and go right to the nuts and bolts that start right afterward.  I settled on this method of goose disbursement for a few different reasons, which I'll outline later, unless I decide it's boring.

 

Above: Buckle up, entrepreneurs!  Here they come!  Metaphorically!

I'm going to use this space to talk about Kiva and microfinance in general and to describe my personal experiences as a Baron of Microfinance. Because if you don't talk about it on the internet, it's like it never happened.

I'm two loans at the moment now, and I'm planning to add to that regularly.  I'm extremely excited about this right now, both by the concept and the practice, but I'm going to try to remain objective.  I won't proselytize; at least not until I know more about the whole thing.  I don't want to wind up like some poor sucker who sent a bunch of money to Wyclef only to find out that about a nickel of it went to Haiti, and I extra don't want to wind up telling someone else to do it.

Next time: I explain what drew me to this particular method of goose-lending and why it's fun.