KivaFriends Liaison: call write-up (most recent: 10 JANUARY 2011)

[Guest]

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[RichardF]

(4)  Expired and Expiring loans.
Will Kiva consider partially funding loans that expire rather than refunding them? 
No, this is not something lenders should ever expect Kiva to do.

Why?  This is not a transparent reply to a serious recommendation.

[KFLiaison]

Here are the notes I took during the call I had with Gerard this week.  I added a number of other questions at the end and will include those also.  Some of these responses address more than one of the points I sent him on Tuesday.

We had much discussion, again, about the Popularity Algorithm.  Gerard made it very clear that they are aware KF members are not satisfied with the way it works, and after our input they did remove the video component of the algorithm and have sent around our input to various staff members.  However, early in 2010 the Kiva staff is scheduled to have a series of planning meetings to determine priorities for the year. One of the top items to discuss is how to change the lending process to present the "best" loans up front, understanding that the concept of "best" differs over various constituencies.  They are struggling with concepts such as whether to do away with the concept of the Lend page or the Home page, whether to feature a field partner rather than a loan, whether to present a grid of loans using several characteristics (such as in the mock-up David2051 provided)... and Gerard say our input will be used in that process.  They want to look at the problem through that lens, rather than trying to tweak or perfect a mechanism that they might be abandoning soon (a.k.a. the Popularity Algorithm).  For the rest of 2009, the staff/engineering focus is on making the website more transparent (in response to the controversies generated in the past month or so, especially with respect to pre-disbursal of loans), and being sure the GC process works right for the holiday surge.

Gerard stated that he would present the problem with loans expiring while possibly legitimate pieces are basketed as a problem to be addressed as part of the above planning process.  He stated that the countdown and expiration timers are now in sync and the early expirations should not be a problem this month.

Gerard said he would file bug tickets this week to get Engineering to fix the expired loan counting bug wherein Expired/Refunded loans are not counted the same way on the Lender and Portfolio pages, and also to return to the more rational sort on the Portfolio page. 

I am following up with Gerard on the question of a clearer statement of Kiva's Privacy Policy on their website, and he expects it will be addressed in 2010.

He agrees that it would be ideal to have a single page somewhere where Field Partner (FP) updates are all indicated as the changes are made to the respective FP's pages, but this is not likely to make it to the top of Engineering's to-do list in 2010.  He is hoping to possibly use the Help Center somehow to make this information more visible without having to go visit each individual FP's page to see if anything has changed.

There are no new rules regarding funding which would explain the 1800-2000 loans or more available now.  Instead, it's an offshoot of FPs ramping up for the holidays.  They have a full-year funding allowance, which most have not reached by this time, and knowing that having a larger inventory over the holiday season is good for them, they are submitting more loans just now.

Apparently the term "backfill", standing for "replenishing the FP's loan capital" was the result of many discussions among Kiva staff.  The space is not available to include more than that on the loan page, but Gerard agreed that it could easily be misunderstood or just plain NOT understood by many (especially the new lenders they're expecting over the holidays), so he has agreed to do something, such as making it a hotlink to a pop-up which explains its meaning, before the holidays.

The translation test having ended, Kiva loans can be expected to be presented in English for the foreseeable future.  Analysis of the test will be available early in 2010.

Next Tuesday (15 Dec 2009) is the date for selection of the next KF Liaison.  Good luck to all!


--Diane.

[YowieFreak]

He agrees that it would be ideal to have a single page somewhere where Field Partner (FP) updates are all indicated as the changes are made to the respective FP's pages, but this is not likely to make it to the top of Engineering's to-do list in 2010.  He is hoping to possibly use the Help Center somehow to make this information more visible without having to go visit each individual FP's page to see if anything has changed.

One concern a while back was that there's no good way to get updates about problem partner status changes and the status of bugs.

So, we've put this together - http://twitter.com/kivaupdates

Working on embedding it in the Help Center so everyone, not just Kiva Friends can see it.

Maybe if they just continued doing what they said they would do, then we wouldn't have such an issue with this item.

[howard]

Thank you, Diane.

It's good to read about the more rational sort on the portfolio pages.  Let's hope it happens before too long.

Howard

[JohnR]

Thanks for keeping us informed, Diane, and for your productive conversations with Gerard.  Even if changes we'd like to see don't come or don't come as fast as we'd like, it's very encouraging to know that you're getting our concerns into Kiva's ears. 

John

Edit: After I posted this I realized it could be taken as a swipe at YowieFreak and Howard, whose comments just preceeded it.  Please don't anyone read it that way, that was not my intention.   Only meant to speak in general terms.

[alan]

Gerard stated that he would present the problem with loans expiring while possibly legitimate pieces are basketed as a problem to be addressed as part of the above planning process.  He stated that the countdown and expiration timers are now in sync and the early expirations should not be a problem this month.

Thank you for this, and for all you do, Diane.

I am glad to hear that Gerard has heard that there is a problem with basketing expiring loans (even if not all basketing is necessarily problematic).

[Skimmis]

Here are the notes I took during the call I had with Gerard this week.  I added a number of other questions at the end and will include those also.  Some of these responses address more than one of the points I sent him on Tuesday.



Next Tuesday (15 Dec 2009) is the date for selection of the next KF Liaison.  Good luck to all!


--Diane.

aND THE WINNER IS?

[KFLiaison]

The list of topics that I sent to Gerard can be found here
I want to thank Diane, more than I can say, for her support and advice during this first few weeks and call with Gerard.  I am sure you will continue to hear from me, as your advice is wonderful and support even more appreciated.


Here is a summary of our discussion with Gerard.  Any additional questions or items for future discussion, please let me know.

Full year funding was incorrectly explained by Gerard in the last call to Diane.  There is no full year funding allowance, but just a monthly fundraising limit.  Most MFI’s do not post up to their fundraising limits every month.  In December, more MFI’s posted close to their limits in anticipation of the Holiday lending as a result of gift certificates.  The MFI’s that do post their monthly limit every month are the ones that you see on the 1st of each month in the mass release.  Kiva is considering a yearly credit instead of a monthly limit to help the MFI’s with a majority of agricultural loans that are given at certain times of the year.

At this point the auto lender is turned down to a very low setting because the % of lenders that have it set up is very low.  It is set to run every 10 minutes (from my notes of the community conference call) and with clarification for Gerard, can be set from a low % to high % for # of loans to match.  When it runs in the 10 minute intervals perhaps it will find 10 loans that have been lent to that match the criteria that have been set by lenders using the auto lending feature.  Depending on the setting perhaps 2 or 3 will get matched each time it is run, not all 10, right now.  Auto lending is completely turned off on the 15th and 16th of each month to allow for the roll out of credits. 

The help center page of kiva.org http://www.kiva.org/about/help have plans to have a  common area for field partner updates as they do now for “known issues” under the “Troubleshooting and Bugs” section.  Hoping to have this functional sometime in February.  Diane made the great suggestion to then send this out in the newsletter so that everyone has access to the knowledge. 

There is no analysis back from the trial of non translated loans.  The volunteer has not had the time to complete this yet.  For translation of journal updates, the software is not in place at this point to have the updates sent to the queue for translation by the volunteer translation team.

Gerard will push for a review of "backfill" and its alternatives (and that he thanks KF for providing a couple one-word alternatives), but that any change isn't likely to happen until after the engineering meeting.

Field Partner Updates:

TYM Fund-Vietnam:  Because of the amount being short because of an error in the exchange to USD, the amount sent to kiva was short.  This money is being held and all payments will be made as soon as the remainder is received. (Update, it looks as though the delinquent payments were made today Jan. 22.)

BRAC Tanzania:  Although frustrating on all sides, the problem with BRAC Tanzania is still being worked on.

There are no immediate plans to modify the current portfolio tools, sort, presentation or auto lending criteria, pending establishment of the 2010 engineering plan and plans for revising the overall lender "experience".  These meeting should be taking place in the next couple of weeks and hopefully will have a list for you after the next call.

The new class of kiva fellows are getting ready to begin training.  There are 35 in this group.   The training will begin happening 4 times a year instead of the 3 times a year that it has been.  This allows for a somewhat smaller group that allows for easier training and also getting more kiva fellows out to more MFI’s throughout the year.

[Natasha]

Thanks Charmaine for the feedback! 

[KFLiaison]

Here are my notes from yesterdays call with Gerard.   The original topics I sent in can be found here

Kiva employees had their yearly meeting to set engineering priorities for 2010. 
•   Field Partner journaling.  There is not a streamlined way for field partners to journal right now.  They would like to see something set up that allows them to upload journals in the same way they are able to upload loans to the kiva.org site.
•   Kiva friendliness.  Yesterday you saw the first steps in this process with the new profile page that has a fully funded banner at the top, a “find a loan” button in the lend box, as well as a “more loans from this partner” box directly below the lend box.  An example:  http://www.kiva.org/lend/178952  Also links have been added at the top of each profile page to make sharing or bookmarking easier.  Part of the revamp of the profile pages have come from 1st time users clicking on a profile link on FB and it being funded.  This has been written many times to customer service.   The hope is that this gives a clearer path for them to find more  fundraising loans.  The lowest conversion rate is from people who find kiva through search engines, FB, etc.  opposed to typing in kiva.org. 
•   Large lender profile updates will be addressed in the 2nd half of the year

As the year progresses and the list gets revised Gerard will keep us informed.  These are broad areas now and will get more specific as the year goes on.

“Field Partner Issues” area of help center http://www.kiva.org/about/help will be updated on a monthly basis right now.  Hopefully at some point a volunteer can take this project over and the updates could happen a bit more frequently.  But for the large majority of cases monthly will be ok since some of the problems move slowly.   Any feedback to customer service about likes, dislikes of the field partner issue area would be welcomed.
•   Sinapi ABA Trust of Ghana will be added next week to the list.
•   A new update for TYM-Vietnam is expected as well.  The conversion rate confusion that happened in November is no longer the problem.  They are looking into what now is the problem and hope to get some “on the ground” news the end of this week or beginning of next.

Kiva Loan Quotas for MFI’s will soon be listed on the help center section of kiva.org.  Not for each individual MFI but the benchmarks that kiva uses and correspond to the star ratings as well as pilot status.  Look forward to seeing this soon.

The paypal situation with autofilling anonymous lenders address fields has been taken care of.  Kiva will continue to collect the address data for the ability to contact the payee in case of transaction errors, which have happened.  As kiva accounts can be families, businesses or other entities this allows them to contact the payee if the need arises.  As money is going toward lending and not just as a donation, when there is a problem,  being able to access this information from paypal makes correcting it much easier.

The field partner footer was removed for the reason that it was the least clicked on footer on the page.  This information can still be found at www.kiva.org/partners, or from the about link at the top of any page.

Automatic Donation has been requested by some through customer service and was discussed.  They were under the impression this would be difficult to implement using paypal.  I have now sent the information to Gerard from Donorschoose that allows paypal to be used for the monthly withdrawl.  This was something they are very interested in seeing how involved implementing it would be.

When posting team messages after clicking on the Send button I have been taken to the home page, apparently logged out. But when I clicked on the Back button on my browser, I went back to the team page, logged in, with the message posted.  Gerard believed this bug was caused when the new URLs were put in place.  They were unable to recreate this happening after I sent it in.  If this happens again please send either to me or to customer service your browser/system information so they can look into it further.

The terms of use wording in regards to lenders photos is being revisited.  They agree that it is very conservative and the approach, better safe than sorry, was used in wording it.  They are hoping to redo it to reflect the actual intent of usage for the pictures.  It was made much more conservative when developments were made that photos would go out on ie lendstream, etc. 

Our last topic was the conversion rate and what kiva friends or other frequent visitors to kiva did to the graph.  The answer is little.  The graph of today looks like:  a large percentage of 1 time a month visitors tapering off to a low plateau of 5-6 visits/month, stays low and then spikes again at over 25 visits per month.  We know who those people are