An alternative until the timing problem is fixed.

[Guest]

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[eithi]

Currently, there are about 50000 Active loans, and each is on average about $426.50 and 10.2 months long. Assuming that therefore on average, 1/10 of each active loan is repaid at the 15th of each month, there would be over $2,132,500 returned to lenders each month, sitting there as kiva credit until the first of the next month. I had read that Kiva is currently working on adjusting the timing problem of new loans coming in only at the 1st of each month. But until that happens, there will be on average 15 days each month with a lot of money just sitting there, because few see a point in withdrawing it only to later put it back in, few gift it, and few donate to kiva. If there was a fourth option, namely to put it in a kiva bank account, with the interest being donated to kiva, and a withdrawal option after a minimum of two weeks, then even if it's at a rate of as low as 1% yearly, kiva would make .5% on all that extra money - amounting to over $10,000 in funds. May not seem like that much, but with the current growth rate and the uncertainty of when the timing problem will be fixed, that could amount to much and be well worth the effort of adding this extra feature to kiva. Any thoughts?

[AccountAbility]

Kiva already keeps its "float" monies in a separate entity which does earn them interest for operational expenses.  So I don't think this would help much economically. 
And what I have observed leads me to think that much of that credit posted to lenders on the 15th gets quickly reloaned.  I don't know if we have a way to tell how much.

Dan

[eithi]

The general conception I had was that many do not find loans they wish to fund between the 15th and 1st because of scarcity and lack of choice (this is just from what I've read on the forums, personal experience, etc.). If it isn't so, then this isn't as much of a problem which is a good thing. Although if as you say kiva already has that function existing as a separate entity, it wouldn't be so difficult to enable such a feature on Kiva, to allow users to have an alternative to giving to a loan they don't feel very connected to or feel that the repayment term does not fit their loaning preferences (and hate to see their money being unused for half of the time). Even if there perhaps aren't as many users who have money sitting idly as Kiva credit, it is still worth it, and the number of such users is also sure to grow.

[YowieFreak]

I don't know if we have a way to tell how much.

The RSS feed for the stats has various loan amount fields which seem to be based on the amount committed by lenders, as distinct from what is shown on the normal stats pages which is the amount of fully-funded loans.

(I haven't worked out why, at some times of the month, the RSS field can be lower than the fully-funded amount - maybe the RSS feed is reduced when refunded loans are repaid or something.)

Anyway, looking at the RSS figures for the next couple of days should enable us to see how much is actually being reinvested and when.

In the meantime, I can say that the loans funded each day just after the credits arrived last month were:

• 15 Feb - $284,100
• 16 Feb - $171,500
• 17 Feb - $173,850
• 18 Feb - $179,025
• 19 Feb - $196,475
• 20 Feb - $206,275
• 21 Feb - $ 86,550

I can't remember but I don't think there were huge numbers of loans available at that time, so I would think that most of the amounts committed by lenders would have been going into what then became fully-funded loans, so I think those figures would be a rough indication of how quickly the credits were being reinvested in February.

[YowieFreak]

If there was a fourth option, namely to put it in a kiva bank account, with the interest being donated to kiva, and a withdrawal option after a minimum of two weeks, ....

This is the current default position - if you leave the money sitting in your Kiva Account then Kiva (or, as Dan correctly pointed out, the separate entity) invests the money and the interest goes to Kiva.

So no effort at all is required to implement this, it happens already.

(Hmmm - I wonder if there is any way of telling how big an amount they are actually receiving in interest.  Will it turn up in their accounts as "interest received" or, because it is being transferred from the other "trust fund", will it be shown as some sort of donation?)

[eithi]

oh, ok. I must have misunderstood. In that case, well that's awesome! I didn't know about this.

[Unilove]

Hello eithi and welcome   good questions and suggestions... it's a good thing to ask, explore, and discuss 

[fredr1c]

Here's one place where Matt Flannery talked about the separate entity that holds the float:

http://www.socialedge.org/blogs/kiva-chronicles/archive/2008/03/01/escheat-me

[AccountAbility]

While Kiva Microfunds has an requirement to post its financial data available to the public (and the next 990 form should be much more "user friendly" in terms of understanding what it means), I wonder both what the requirements are and how Kiva will report the financial data of the subsidiary "Kiva User Funds, LLC" which holds user funds and now makes the interest.

If it all comes in to Kiva as a donation, then without further reporting we are moving backwards in transparency to not have the interest figure shown separately.

Dan