How Close?

I'm suprised that there's not been more discussion in response to the questions that you present in the last paragraph

it seems to me that strategy needs to drive structure, and that Kiva has the potential to really make a difference. The Long Tail (business best seller) points out the trend towards the "democritization of information" and you are certainly on the leading edge of provacatively using technology to get money into the hands of those that really need it.

I returned from Kenya last month after a three week personal fact finding trip where my wife and I traced the money we'd loaned through Kiva. We visted three Field partners (Ebony, RAFODE, and Peoples) and through them the loan recipients. "Show me the money!" was my motto and I'm pleased to report that it gets where it's supposed to.

We also established ties with five university Students in Free Enterprise teams in Kenya to work with your field partners and loan recipients in grass roots consulting projects (in cooperation with my students virtually back here in the states). So far, so good

but I suppose this exposes my vision of Kiva as occupying a key position along the entire microfinance value chain.

Gary

My perception:

Kiva is a distribution platform utilizing Internet technology to move information between the “Haves” and the “Have-Nots” to facilitate a transaction around social/economic development products. The output of the transaction could be anything. The current output of the platform is micro loans. In future, I vision Kiva diversifying in values they deliver through various other partners.

Kiva’s focus should be to create efficient supply chain around the globe, diversifying on values they deliver and continue to attract the new market segment of philanthropists with $25 dollar budget.

Question to ask is will a Kiva loaner turn into:

-Kiva donor -Kiva mentor -Kiva customer -Kiva volunteer -Kiva teacher

The focus needs be around brokering of information between the developed and the underdeveloped world than to consider itself as microfinance or an International NGO. There is more value created in Kiva working as a broker/facilitator of “good” products.

Cheers, Bal K Joshi Thamel.com

Kiva certainly fills a critical need and has the potential to do much, much more, both in the financial world and in the socioeconomic sphere. I've known you guys from the beginning and am wowed by your news all the time.

Best to you and Jess, Barbara

Matt,

I see Kiva as "something in between". You aren't a technology platform with offices in SF-- you operate a technology platform from an office in SF. You have very limited operations in the field, and there are advantages of holding to that. What would the results of extensive field operations be? Overhead, duplication of efforts with your partners, working on problems outside your core competencies. So I wouldn't think that, at this stage at least, that you want to take things that way.

What you have that's lightweight and well-suited to the internet, however, is direct connections with your partner organizations. And, potentially more importantly, they could have a connection to each other through working with you.

Assume for the moment that a number of organizations you're associated with are working on problems that are either duplicative or, better, complementary with each other, or working on specific problems in areas that have multiple needs. It would seem resaonable to set up a wiki, mailing list/discussion group, and some kind of contact management application, as a crude starting point, for a clearinghouse for your partner organizations to share assessments of conditions ("microentrepreneurs in village X would be doing a lot better with their farming projects if they had a reliable supply of clean water, or if the workers didn't keep getting malaria"), understand each other's needs and capabilities, and so on. You could even then use the collected information to help non-lending organizations learn to deliver their aid where it would dovetail with other efforts.

As a counter-point I think of the "Millenium Villages" efforts (http://www.earth.columbia.edu/millenniumvillages/) that are pouring huge amounts of resources into a small number of villages to see what the effects are. I think those efforts may be vast overkill, and those resources will wind up inefficiently used.

But introducing organizations to each other's efforts, breaking down silos between each group's "pet projects", could enable modest but complementary assistance that would multiply effects of individual efforts. One group, say, works on local agricultural development or small-scale craft industries, another sets up a CFW franchise to cut worker illness/absenteeism, another funds a couple of "cell phone ladies" in the same town to enable finding out where products are in demand, another subsidizes people who want to start transport businesses (i.e. lend a driver $1000 to fix up an old truck that carry goods from that same town to the outside world, based on buyers located using the cell phones)... Of course, in the absence of good roads the transport leg in particular is hard to pull off, but...

It's ambitious, but it's lightweight, and it's something where you can really rely on the local expertise of your partners.

Just as providing transparency between individual lenders and individual borrowers was the initial revolutionary idea to come out of Kiva, enabling transparency among your partners may be the next piece of value-add that Kiva can do without having to grow a huge staff.

Anyway-- that's my wild-eyed response to what Kiva could become, or could try to do next. Of course you don't want to get too dogmatic about what you are doing-- you're in uncharted territory and may need to change course at any time. But... take the ideas of a kiva-watcher for what they are worth.