a little late, some notes on...
Kiva Community Conference Call April 15th 2009 at 2pm PDT
Attendees from Kiva: Premal, Tim, Fiona, Gerard, Liz, Jeremy, Matt, Sid, Lily, Joey
"problem" Field Partners: update from Tim Hassett (Portfolio Director)MIFEX – Ecuador - Kiva has found legal counsel in Ecuador to handle the litigation. Bringing that counsel up to speed.
Action Now:Kenya (AN:K) – has agreed to sign a promissory note with Kiva with substantial time to repay – concessionary terms. Around $47,000 is owed altogether. After a 3 month grace period, AN:K will in June this year start paying around $1,000 per month, to be applied proportionally to all AN:K lenders.
(This is pretty much what has already been revealed on AN:K's partner page, see the March 31st update there). Tim said this solution is felt to achieve the twin objectives of eventually getting repayment to lenders, and not doing harm to AN:K and its clients.
Fundación San Miguel Arcángel (FSMA) – Dominican Republic - FSMA is negotiating with all its lenders (not just Kiva..) a 1 year moratorium involving non-payment of principal. At the end of that 1 year moratorium, FSMA will get back to Kiva with a proposal for a repayment plan. FSMA hopes to remain a going concern, although the damage done by the fraud was severe. They hope to recover some of the misappropriated funds.
HELP Africa – Togo – nothing much to add to the March 12th status update on their partner page. Kiva's (i.e. Kiva lenders') total exposure is about $22,000. HELP Africa is still trying to reconstitute its Board of Directors. Kiva still hopes for a repayment plan.
Ebony Foundation – Kenya - more encouraging news. 4th monthly installment has been received. And, Ebony has recently indicated it would like to change terms of the promissory note in order to repay
all Kiva lenders. (As opposed to only those lenders whose borrowers have not defaulted - see Kiva's updates on the Eb-F partner page). Kiva is holding onto funds received until they know who to give them to. Kiva still does not have a list of actual defaults.
Questions?
How much has EF paid? About $9,000 (per month I think he said).
Preview of Loan Matching Feature - PremalKiva would like to allow anyone to become a matcher to someone else on the website. Inspired by the Obama campaign which built community. You are more likely to make a loan that is matched because it doubles the impact. Just 6% to 7% of visitors to the Kiva website make a loan. This matching feature is aimed at improving that conversion rate.
Premal invited callers to look at the slide presentation about this:
http://www.slideshare.net/kivamicrofunds/matching-presentation-con-call-april-2009New Page: My Matching
Defaults to No for all users
If you choose to turn on the feature
Options - start matching now, or after inactive 1 year
State criteria for matching eg, gender, location
Keywords such as: kids, tuition, organic or green
Select a specific country or sector.
This will then show all loans in history that match this criteria. This helps Kiva to find out what is popular.
Then you can type a message to lenders. – custom text. Maybe why you want to match this loan.
Minimum account balance allows lenders to both match and loan regularly.
Revenue is important, so there is a request [
actually, a requirement] for a donation as a part of this feature as it is resource expensive. Can donate either an extra amount or the repayments from the loans.
Questions prompted by Premal's presentation about the loan-matching feature
What is different in this feature from just funding a loan in $25 increments?Premal: See slide 5. Allows you to inspire other lenders to loan more, or to make a loan by doubling their impact. It also automates your relending power.
In addition to the selection criteria you have provided there is no negative check-off. There are some things I would like to avoid, MFIs I do not lend to or other things I do not want to loan to.Premal: This is interesting. We should be able to do this negative filter in the future.
How does this impact donations? Does this preclude the donation step?Premal: If you look at slide 5, matcher has an option to donate 100% of repayments to Kiva or 10% at minimum. If anything we hope it will help increase donations. We hope that matching will help to increase the ratio of visitors to the site to lenders.
When is this launching?Matching program would come online this summer.
there were not very many questions or observations from callers about the loan matching feature, so Premal moved right along to a new topic, framed as a question from him to the callers.
Loans to teachers through Teach For America (TFA)An opportunity has come up with Teach for America which places young college grads into tough schools to teach. Turns out that these teachers need money to get set up. They are just out of college. TFA already makes loans to these teachers, 18 month terms. There is some discussion of having them raise money on Kiva. We would like to hear your perspective on this. They do 2,500 loans to these teachers.
I would be more inclined to loan to them because they have steady employment.It really mixes the message though, their not being the working poor. I like it, but maybe it needs to be separated out into a new website or subsection. These graduates have external resources. It’s a great organization but these graduates are not going to be poor for the rest of their lives.Would the borrower description include a complete explanation of their situation?Premal: I think we would have the description include whatever the teacher felt comfortable with. That can be changed as lenders provide feedback. Probably not a separate section on the website, there would be a call-out sections (like that with group loans). Would that be in line with your expectations?
Why do they need money?These loans are to cover their starting expenses, moving and setting up a new apartment.
the way to sell it is to note that they teachers are going into the worst inner city schools.one way to address the mixed message would be to provide loans to new loan officers with the MFIs. Premal liked that idea. MFIs do such loans to staff, but they're not allowed to post them on Kiva, as there would be an element of "self-dealing".
this idea seems to be sufficiently far away from Kiva’s core mission of alleviating poverty as to appear astonishing and absurd that Kiva is seriously contemplating it. Repeated and endorsed what a previous caller had said, that
recent graduates who (laudably) serve in this way are exercising a choice. Kiva is about helping people in poverty who have very few choices.Premal: let me fast forward to the future. 10 years from now we would like Kiva to be about social transformation - "lending for social change" in a marketplace where activity is transparent
I want to understand where we are going wrong here. Just like on Ebay you can find many things, and leave it to the internet to decide? Would it do more good long-term?
I think it would. As long as you position it properly, I think it will bring in new lenders.Premal: TFA is now Teach for All, and they are getting started in new countries. I really like the agency of the people who choose to do this, and it’s a powerful point.
Other questions from callersCockfighting loan / loans involving animal crueltythe one that was refunded, why is that being re-posted?Kiva's policy is that as long as the activity is legal where the loan is posted, it can be posted, and individuals can choose whether to support it or not. In order to avoid lender remorse, we will repost the loan noting specifically the purpose of the loan so that they will understand up front what they are supporting.
Why is Kiva drawing the line right there? Cockfighting is animal cruelty. Tell me how that loan is ok, but a loan for prostitution is not ok?Matt: Our policy was tested with this loan, and with the bear bile loan.
The bear bile loan was not legal in its own country.Matt: We generally stick to that principle. We have never had a prostitution loan. Next time, if a loan like that comes up on the site we will learn more about it. Sometimes the legal implications are not clear to us in the country of origin - Kiva isn't expert on what's legal in every part of the world.
Our position is not to judge these things.
I agree with this point. It’s important that we not force our values on others.Kiva has not been tested, has not had to take down a loan for moral reasons.
Cruelty doesn’t matter?Matt: I do not accept that. Those are your words, and not mine.
But then you open the door to others who don’t believe animal should be killed for food.Matt - We want a platform for people to support other people with some very simple ground rules. At this point legality is the line. Ton of ambiguity when you try to impose developed world moral lens. We are trying to find something that reduces the ambiguity in our lives. We want lenders to be able to vote with their money, their feet.
When there are few loans on the site, many people were lending without looking. It’s not necessarily the logical conclusion that they are voting with their dollars.Premal: We also have a policy that if anyone (inadvertently) makes a loan they object to morally we will refund it for them.
Premal We like the activism on the site. This is how things can change. Keep up the energy on this one. We will go research this a bit more.
other questions and commentsUpdate please on loans in the USKiva still working through the vetting process and due diligence. On schedule for summer 2009.
In the USA, will borrowers be required to be legally resident in the USA? Fiona: We will work with FPs in the US. Borrowers have a Tax id number for their business is enough.
Any new countries soon?Yes, Kyrgyzstan is coming up very soon, early May
If you connected to the call and have anything to add that I missed out, feel free to add it. Many thanks to Kerry by the way for a copy of the excellent notes she took during the call.
P
