Hi Lily,
I can confirm for you that we recently updated our code for calculating names to display on the website. Previously, we had been a little too loose about showing entrepreneur names for groups even if we had a group title available. In response to privacy inquiries from our partners, and helpful notes from lenders, we recently made a clean sweep of all businesses and recalculated the names using all the data we had available, including carefully protecting the privacy of the borrowers where our partners had requested we do so.
We ended up changing around 7000 names. Sometimes it was just simple reformatting ("John Doe" => "John Doe"). Other times we replaced group leader names with group names.
The official naming algorithm we use goes like this:
setup:
- partners input full entrepreneur names for both group and individual loans
- they also select whether or not we are permitted to show the full entrepreneur name, or first names only.
- for groups, they may enter an optional group title.
- They also must designate a group leader for each group.
names (sorry it's kinda cryptic - I'm a programmer!!):
if(it's an individual loan){
name = the entrepreneur's name, less the family name if the partner requested we hide it
}
if(it's a group loan){
if(the partner entered a group title){
name = the group title
(sometimes we append the word "Group" here, for instance "Exultacíon" would become "Exultacíon Group"
}else if(they did not enter a group title){
name = the group leader's name, less the family name if the partner requested we hide it
(we typically append "'s Group" here. for instance, a group leader of "Lorena Gonzalez" would become "Lorena Gonzalez's Group")
}
}
Here are a bunch of examples:
1. 3 entrepreneurs, no group title, group leader = "Jane Doe", no need to hide last name:
"Jane Doe's Group"
2. Same as above, but partner requests we hide the entrepreneur's last name:
"Jane's Group"
3. Any group with an entered TITLE not containing the word "group":
"TITLE Group"
4. Any group with an entered TITLE containing the word "group":
"TITLE"
5. Individual Loan for "Jane Doe", hiding last name:
"Jane"
6. Individual Loan for "Jane Doe", partner did not reques we hide the last name:
"Jane Doe"
We have done with an older concept of a "business name" as most borrowers just don't have a true name for their business (such as "Kiva", "Ford", or "Jimmy's Sandwich Shoppe"). This may have effected the names on some of your older loans as well.
Whew! I can't decide after rereading this if it will clear things up or make it more confusing
but it's as much info as I've got about how we reworked the business names.
Let me know if you have any questions,
-Jonathan
