How Kiva Posts Businesses

[Guest]

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[cpbailey]

The last of those really old home loans from Mexico finally got filled!!!   

I suspect some of the variety issue is that Africa, Central America and Middle East don't have enough loans to last the whole month.  Asia runs out of Viet Nam and other southeast Asian loans, leaving Azerbaijan, Tajikistan, Samoa and Cambodia (last month only Azerbaijan was big, so this is much improved). 

Colette

[RichardF]

MFIs don't post listings to "Kiva.org,"  they just upload them through their "back door site."  Kiva staffers decide what gets posted for us to see and when (not counting those sneaky peekers). 

That's how they can manage monthly quotas and stock up for big events. 

Having a balanced set of listings sure would be nice.  I'm thinking they still need more "mature" MFIs and a little more help from their programmers (to do some automatic balancing) before we start to see more of that.

[AccountAbility]

MFIs don't post listings to "Kiva.org,"  they just upload them through their "back door site."  Kiva staffers decide what gets posted for us to see and when (not counting those sneaky peekers). 

If there truly is a backlog of loans uploaded through their "back door", then I think it would be pretty simple to scramble the new loans actually posted. 

But I suspect the reason we get chunks from one MFI and then chunks from another is there isn't much reserve available to choose from, internal constraints having been imposed.

Again, it wouldn't be as much of an issue if we had closer to 100 loans posted on the website.  Then six to ten from the same MFI at once would blend in much easier. 

(And I will again grudgingly admit that the default sort by "popularity" does increase the dispersion of the "chunk".)
Dan

[Jundee]

This may be a dumb question but how high a loan can entrepeneurs ask for? and what would be the longest re-payment term?

[Robert]

Since I joined in May, there hasn't been any loan over $1200. There have been many loans of that amount from nearly all business sectors and from nearly all countries, which makes me believe that it's a Kiva limit. When you browse the database (Status: All; Sort By: Loan Amount), you still find a few larger loans, up to $2000. I don't know if there is a limit for the repayment term, but I have the feeling that it has increased since I joined. In the beginning, the long term was 15 or 18 months, after that many loans with a term of 22 months were posted, and for a few weeks a few loans with a term of 24 months appeared.   

[QueenOfHearts]

This may be a dumb question but how high a loan can entrepeneurs ask for? and what would be the longest re-payment term?

Didnt your mothe ever tell you there is no such thing as a dumb question??? LOL
Actually it is a very valid question and I think Robert may be right...the terms have changed as Kiva has grown.

Queen

[Jundee]

She never did.... I was a very inquisitive kid.

[AccountAbility]

This may be a dumb question but how high a loan can entrepeneurs ask for? and what would be the longest re-payment term?

The "search" function on the loan page can produce many answers for you if you play with it a bit.  For instance, I put in "$2000" and changed the criteria to ALL loans and got a listing of 36 loans for $2000.

In general, Robert's numbers seem to be about right by my observation.

Dan