Kiva Looking into Group Lending Functionality

[Guest]

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[RichardF]

I agree with Henry (on the first part, not on, "i can sometimes be narrowminded!").    What you're suggesting doesn't seems to add any lending functionality to what's already available.

As far as creating a "group" of individual lenders goes, that seems fine for the purpose of social networking.  For example, the Kiva page at Change.org allows for folks to show their support by joining and posting various types of comments and resources.  I'm sure many schools, churches and other groups would find something like this valuable.

If you all do choose to go down the social networking road, I hope you also would implement a set of "friends" functionalities, e.g., adding friends and sending messages - public & private.

[Agent001]

I have to agree with the two previous comments - I do understand this is a much simpler engineering fix for Kiva at the moment than actually creating the multi-level passwords etc required - the value would be in loosely affiliated groups being able to automatically show their collective impact. I don't see it as zero value, just not a particularly useful solution for those in this forum. Again, much simpler for kiva to implement too...

BIGGEST concern remains the ability to "lock" accounts without making them non-withdrawable...a second hardcore password in the case people wish to withdraw funds, or written permission to Kiva. This would be on an exception basis, as its not a LOT of accounts that would need it at all, but those that do represent a lot of money.

As mentioned, a secondary log-in is an evolution I expect Kiva will be happy to have once they take the leap...

Thanks for posting Roma!!

Shawn

[roma]

Thanks for the reply, guys -- I appreciate it. And I want to reiterate that I hear your problem and believe it's an important one.

I do want to be clear that I don't think the fix we're looking at precludes doing the multi-level password fix. That's something that could be built on top of this feature if we make sure to build it thoughtfully, or it's something we could address through an entirely different solution. It's not really an either-or in my mind.

Just as some background, this has come up as a fix to the more basic problem of being able to lend and create impact as a group, which is something our customer service folks hear a great deal about. It's also an attempt to create more viral awareness around Kiva since we need to start recruiting more lenders to the site. Richard, you mention "social networking." We don't want to create a social network for a social network's sake; there are sites out there that already do this much better than we ever will be able to or care to. Rather, we want to build a community/site for people who care about alleviating poverty (KivaFriends is in many ways the cornerstone of this community). Having more viral and community-motivating features is one way to do this.

That's kind of a ramble, but I just wanted to provide you all with some insight into what's going on inside our minds

Thanks for the input

[Agent001]

Thanks Roma...I actually think you guys are pretty fantastic at trying to balance everyone's needs, within an org that is growing almost exponentially. Just can't know what our needs are if we don't tell you (over and over?).

Its a security concern too - I know the goal isn't to have a lot of money sitting in the account but significant amounts can accumulate and its just frighteningly easy to imagine the ability to scoop a password and transfer it out. Even an ability to LOCK what paypal account it can be moved to...

[Diane R]

The social networking functionality that I would see as more useful on the Kiva.org site would be the ability to indicate if I was open to contact from other lenders, and the ability to contact others directly through the site.  I don't see any need for the ability to form ad-hoc lending groups through the Kiva.org site, and would suggest that there are more urgent technical fixes and improvements that might make better use of the programming muscle.

Just my $0.02. 

--Diane.

[RichardF]

Richard, you mention "social networking." We don't want to create a social network for a social network's sake; there are sites out there that already do this much better than we ever will be able to or care to. Rather, we want to build a community/site for people who care about alleviating poverty (KivaFriends is in many ways the cornerstone of this community). Having more viral and community-motivating features is one way to do this.

Hi Roma, I'm glad to see, "We don't want to create a social network for a social network's sake."  I never recommended anything like that.  Change.org wasn't created for that purpose, neither were schools or churches.

Let's say folks who are interested in topics like those listed at the Kivapedia - Education Connections page formed an "Education Network" group with the ability to interact with "friends" lending through Kiva.  A weakness of the Kiva site as I see it now is the inability to contact other lenders we might see have common interests, such as education.  Sending a message to offer collaborations certainly has great potential to leverage the Kiva platform toward the aim of alleviating global poverty.  Having a group page becomes its own advertisement for more members to join.  I hope Kiva finds a way to directly support such collaborations on it's web site.

[AccountAbility]

I do want to be clear that I don't think the fix we're looking at precludes doing the multi-level password fix. That's something that could be built on top of this feature if we make sure to build it thoughtfully, or it's something we could address through an entirely different solution. It's not really an either-or in my mind.

Thanks for the input

Thanks for joining this thread and entering the dialogue.  I personally see the two issues as completely different.  While we have never heard of this other issue being brought up or discussed here, the multiple logins has been requested here from a number of fronts.  In addition to Shawn's needs for groups such as Agents for Change, there are benefactor accounts such a parents and grandparents who want to keep connected to "beneficiary" accounts, desiring to control withdrawals but wanting the "beneficiary" to be able to freely access the account and re-loan credits in a closed system.  This similar type of usage has been asked for with some regularity here.

My personal opinion about the other project you are working on is that lenders would need to have a choice to opt in, because many would not want it, even those who have not signed up as "anonymous".  Just look at the flack that arose over showing a lender's invitees without permission.

Dan