Gifts in honor or memory of someone

[Guest]

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[KyRoamer]

Instead of my giving a gift card to someone who has no interest in Kiva, I'd like to make a loan in honor ofsomeone and have Kiva email them an acknowledgement with a link to the borrower. Kiva does not seem to be set up to encourage that. Most charities are. Now where it would be nice if the recipient of a gift card joined and made many other loans, too often money just sits around. My way, the money goes to work immediately. Kiva could even require a 10% donation for the cost of processing the recipient email.

Thoughts? Can it be done now? Guess you could post a message on Kiva and send a link.

[Visitor Number 1]

There are some options to make a loan in honor of someone:

1) set up a separate Kiva account in honor of that person (you or someone who is interested in Kiva would control the account)
2) set up a lending team in honor of that person and you could make a loan from your Kiva account and attribute it to the honorary lending team; others could be asked to join the lending team

Once the loan or the lending team is established, you would have to take the initiative to notify the target recipients that a loan was made on their behalf.  The main problem in the scenario you described is having idle money after the loan is repaid, especially if the recipient is not interested in managing the funds.

You could contact Customer Service at contactus@kiva.org and see if they have plans in the works to create a gift account option.  If the person is not interested in managing the repayments, the default setting could be set to turn all repayments into Kiva donations.

[David2051]

The main problem in the scenario you described is having idle money after the loan is repaid, especially if the recipient is not interested in managing the funds.

I think the scenario described is that KyRoamer would make a loan in someone's honor in his own account.  KyRoamer would get the money repaid and be able to relend it.  I think this is a good idea. 

I've given enough gift certificates to know that I will never again give one to someone who is not already an established Kiva lender.  It's too much hassle to keep track of them and then use them myself or give them to someone else before they expire.