How Kiva Posts Businesses

[Guest]

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[Jill]

A DISCUSSION of the TIMING,  TYPE,  CLASSIFICATION and  MIX  of the LOAN OPPORTUNITIES KIVA POSTS on its Site......

    Thanks to Dan and Glenda...

    This is an experiment in our trying to make navigating the forum a little easier.

     If it seems worthwhile to people, since Joe said he has the capability of moving posts
from one thread to another, (I think he said that),

maybe he can move some posts here from the Tajikistan thread, from
the Fundacion para la Vivienda Progresiva thread, etc., and we can try to
post in bigger, broader stroke Threads, like this one,
anything related to the Kiva business postings,
as framed, above.

                                                                                                           If people don't want to do this, guess what.  They don't have to!

Any alternative ideas or threads would be welcome.

[Henry]

The birds are singing
     the grass is growing
I'm hunting KIVA Loans to fund
    the birds are hunting worms

I'm trying to write an extremely long post
    I have difficulty
I'm wonderful with color- size and font
  it's the words that make me go 'grunt'

oh wait, let me relate!
   I think I just did, or tried...

KIVA Data is where I want to be
   So, Type, Classifications and MIX
is something I hope this discussion
   will FIX!

Worn out now, can't seem to find the words
    guess it's time to spend a
KIVA Credit
now what Type of Loan shall it be.

(Jill, I envy parts of your magnificent brain!) EDIT:  not to mention your lender page!

[Jill]

Henry,
   Bread Crumbs!

     I'll meet you over at Anything Goes.... (smiley guy).
     

[AccountAbility]

A lot of the issues about this come up due to the scarcity of posted loans. 

When we had 10 or 12 pages of loans, one page of home improvement loans was sort of lost in the shuffle.  Likewise, loans from Azerbaijan (or other places).  I suspect that there may not be a lot of options for how the MFIs post their loans other than the batch process we see now.

But when there are less than 50 or so loans in total, the disproportion just jumps out at us.  And that's the very time when we want more loans on the site so a further restriction of type or country would seem counter-productive.

So if Kiva can just get the pipeline going for more loans posted at any given time, a lot of the issues here would go away.  (Although then maybe we would hear more complaints about similarity of loan offerings, but I'll take that problem.)

Dan

[Jill]

  It's a DAY.

     I agree with you, my neighbor to the North.
    Yayyyyyy!

[cpbailey]

Dan,

I agree that home improvement loans are currently over-represented on Kiva.  These loans are taking a VERY long time to fill.  I am hoping that it is a one month thing, and the partner either improves the write-ups (making them more desirable) or is in some way restricted from having so many.  This could be five home improvement loans at any time, but they get posted when another fills.  At the end of the month, the unfilled home improvement loans just get pushed out another month.  The following yet unfilled loan has been posted for 14 days!!! 

http://www.kiva.org/app.php?page=businesses&action=about&id=15509

I personally feel that about 60 loans is enough to choose from yet not be overwhelming.  If Asia were two or three areas, I could see a bit more.  Asia seems to be Samoa, Tajikistan and Azerbaijan this month.  Which is better than just Azerbaijan from recent past. 

Colette

[wind5001]

Colette,

Cambodia has been pretty well represented also, lately.

In my eyes, it's a mixed feeling: on the one hand, I want the entrepreneurs to get on the website, when they have gone through the screening process so that they can be funded quickly (and with some MFIs get the money right away), but on the other hand I would like to see a bigger diversity of countries and continents. But I guess, it won't help much, b/c when they post 15 Sierra Leone loans, they fill so quickly, that it wouldn't help if they posted only 5 every day...a dilemma!

Oli

[Robert]

This lack of diversity can set off a newbie, and that's a problem. I don't see a problem for other lenders, as we have enough diversity in the long run. Those who need a very specific loan type can wait (cf. Mark's Fund). Those who have 1000+ loans and make 5 new loans each day, do not necessarily need to make each day 5 different loans. However, after a few months, their portfolio is well balanced.

[cpbailey]

Robert,

I agree on the balancing the portfolio over time.  That said, I just want a more interesting read.  After awhile I just tune all of them out because they look the same.  It is easier to look at one page of loans than to read thru two and a half of the same stuff to find something I want.  (Wanted cow in Azerbaijan or embroidery in Peru or housing in Mexico...a few of each at a time, please!)

I am in replacement only mode.  So I wait and wait and wait around for something I like.

[AccountAbility]

Dan,
....I personally feel that about 60 loans is enough to choose from yet not be overwhelming.  If Asia were two or three areas, I could see a bit more.  Asia seems to be Samoa, Tajikistan and Azerbaijan this month.  Which is better than just Azerbaijan from recent past. 

Colette

I agree that 60 or so would be a nice number for a person to peruse on the Website, but only if it was a diversified offering.  The current way that MFI put their loans up, (which I imagine is necessary for efficiency) puts too many of the same kind or from the same area for 60 to be sufficient.  I think we should be seeing around 100 to begin to give people the feeling that there really is someone for me to engage with and therefore worth searching through the offerings.  This is a marketing appeal issue.

As an aside, the default sort of "popularity" which many of us (myself included) decried as not the preferred way to sort does have the unique distinction of scrambling the offerings around so that similar loans don't appear all in a row.  Who'd a' thunk. 

Dan

[cpbailey]

The last of those really old home loans from Mexico finally got filled!!!   

I suspect some of the variety issue is that Africa, Central America and Middle East don't have enough loans to last the whole month.  Asia runs out of Viet Nam and other southeast Asian loans, leaving Azerbaijan, Tajikistan, Samoa and Cambodia (last month only Azerbaijan was big, so this is much improved). 

Colette

[RichardF]

MFIs don't post listings to "Kiva.org,"  they just upload them through their "back door site."  Kiva staffers decide what gets posted for us to see and when (not counting those sneaky peekers). 

That's how they can manage monthly quotas and stock up for big events. 

Having a balanced set of listings sure would be nice.  I'm thinking they still need more "mature" MFIs and a little more help from their programmers (to do some automatic balancing) before we start to see more of that.

[AccountAbility]

MFIs don't post listings to "Kiva.org,"  they just upload them through their "back door site."  Kiva staffers decide what gets posted for us to see and when (not counting those sneaky peekers). 

If there truly is a backlog of loans uploaded through their "back door", then I think it would be pretty simple to scramble the new loans actually posted. 

But I suspect the reason we get chunks from one MFI and then chunks from another is there isn't much reserve available to choose from, internal constraints having been imposed.

Again, it wouldn't be as much of an issue if we had closer to 100 loans posted on the website.  Then six to ten from the same MFI at once would blend in much easier. 

(And I will again grudgingly admit that the default sort by "popularity" does increase the dispersion of the "chunk".)
Dan

[Jundee]

This may be a dumb question but how high a loan can entrepeneurs ask for? and what would be the longest re-payment term?

[Robert]

Since I joined in May, there hasn't been any loan over $1200. There have been many loans of that amount from nearly all business sectors and from nearly all countries, which makes me believe that it's a Kiva limit. When you browse the database (Status: All; Sort By: Loan Amount), you still find a few larger loans, up to $2000. I don't know if there is a limit for the repayment term, but I have the feeling that it has increased since I joined. In the beginning, the long term was 15 or 18 months, after that many loans with a term of 22 months were posted, and for a few weeks a few loans with a term of 24 months appeared.   

[QueenOfHearts]

This may be a dumb question but how high a loan can entrepeneurs ask for? and what would be the longest re-payment term?

Didnt your mothe ever tell you there is no such thing as a dumb question??? LOL
Actually it is a very valid question and I think Robert may be right...the terms have changed as Kiva has grown.

Queen

[Jundee]

She never did.... I was a very inquisitive kid.

[AccountAbility]

This may be a dumb question but how high a loan can entrepeneurs ask for? and what would be the longest re-payment term?

The "search" function on the loan page can produce many answers for you if you play with it a bit.  For instance, I put in "$2000" and changed the criteria to ALL loans and got a listing of 36 loans for $2000.

In general, Robert's numbers seem to be about right by my observation.

Dan