Interested in partnering with Kiva? In order to become a Field Partner with Kiva, a microfinance institution must, at a minimum:

• Serve at least 1,000 active borrowers with microfinance services
• Have a history (at least 2-3 years) of lending to poor, excluded, and/or vulnerable people for the purpose of alleviating poverty or reducing vulnerability
• Be registered as a legal entity in its country of operation
• Have at least 1 year of financial audits
• We also prefer an MFI have a profile on the MIX Market (www.mixmarket.org).

Many more details here...

http://www.kiva.org/about/pic_be come

http://www.kiva.org/about/pic_mo del#operational-reqs

I feel that's quite a weak list of criteria for a brand which seems to claim its an ambassador of mc/mf

how about you?

Well, in many ways Kiva is still in early launch mode really. It's a start for now, and I'm sure will get better over time as it matures. The things above (aside from the more detailed info on the links below) offers a attainable without being out of reach, and measurable, threshold list.

Would a stronger list of criteria make it easier or harder for MFI's to become field partners, from your POV?

I have absolutely no problem with Kiva lenders making mistakes, in fact I welcome it. Risk aversion halts progress. We need more mistakes.

I also dont belive for a moment that mature micro finance orgs dont run into exactly the same kinds of bad decisions or fraud. Its a fact of life and there is some percentage of fraud you have to be willing to accept in order to have a risk tolerance that maximizes financial and social returns.

I also outright hate Kiva's standards of only working with large MF institutions. Its risk adverse and in many ways defeats the point of their model. Imagine if ebay started only allowing large retail chains to sell - it makes no sense right? I really hope Kiva does not just become a funding source for already well funded MF orgs.

Hmm, Ive never really thought about it that way before, but maybe its too late - Kiva really is just a grass roots funding source for one of the most well funded sectors in philanthropy.

oddly I, or parts of me, sort of agree with everyone though it may not sound like it

whilst I hate 2 by 2 matrix, I think where I am coming to s thare is

bottom- true microcredit - which has often taken 30 years to plant and scale up transparently to truly make credit a human right of being there exactly at your most productive start up moment, helped by peers and connected into sustainablke goals of the community all around you

top random or untrue microfinance

left small grassroots vital experiments that can fail fast and with just a little resources but where the successes collaboratively flow with other empowering stuff all round the community

right untrue or non-flowin grassroots stuff

find some better wording for that 2by 2 and the systemic question comes: is kiva on a journey where it weill become the epicentre of bottom left - whilst I wish so, I dont get the feel as if it will from the sort of publicity it appears to be happy to get itself.

I suppose the acid test is would the founders of kiva want to go to Yunus and negotiate a social business partnership in which they became Grameen-Kiva. Does that sound a proposterous question - if so why?

Does everything have to relate to Yunus?

I don't see Kiva and Yunus addressing the same issues. Yunus does nothing to involve people with other people. Kiva does. Kiva allows people in developed countries to touch the lives of people in developing countries in a way that can be transforming for both sides of the transaction.

There is room in this world for multiple solutions.

that a really good point. The more solutions we have the more problems we can solve.

>>There is room in this world for multiple solutions.<<

Exactly.

BEAM ME UP: actually there is a misunderstanding - if we are agreed that we are confronting an urgent global systems crisis crashing - then we need one open way up which everyone/every community can transparently collaborate , map, use to win-win-win (local-mediate-global -not other command & control system down from detached tops of white houses!)

so saying that everything revolves around yunus is not a proper assessment of the system crisis we are trapped in- the same one that connects alumni of gandhi, mandela, you name a candidate as one of the 20 highest trust people in the world if we were to make such a survey this year as we have in several proceeding years now- the whole truth (satyagraha as originated by network weavres back in 1907!) is that currently all the world's biggest systems are rewarded, governed, speculated around how fast they extract money

we do need one uniting reconciliation, transformationj to pass what buckminster fuller called mans final examination, einstein podnered as a meta-system -one that had more hamony than the one we work, play or are ruled by,,,

all we need is the other wprld's maps- where systems are governed around the deeper human purposes that beings commune- it happens that yunus offers the simlest open source standard of that but please not by definition that means that anyone else who offers an organsiational system that transparently sustain wholeplanet quality is topographically equivalent -

your comment of everything revolving around yunus can be translated to does everything need to revolve around human sustainability ? the answer to that question for people I netwrk with and trust is yes please

you dont go and tell a maths guy, girl do I find a circle a useful idea but do all wheels have ro revolve round circles? so why worry about open source around you & us http://brand.blogspot.com http://hitrust.blogspot.com

ps incidentally Dr Yunus -his role as banker to thise who need sustainability investment most wherever they may be- is very keen to let you know that he is just one of 30000 co-workers or 7 million microentrpreneurial women -unlike many social entrepreneurs who have just one thing to sell, he banks for all open solutiions around all vilage up problems that Bangladesh and incerasing other vilagers have ever experienced as desperately needing solutions or continuous locally empowered services - to explore yunus world is to share in knowhow of almost every sustainability up experiment that has been tried and networked; for example grameen and bill gates organsiatin have bene doing various pan-china surveys in recent months...

here's more of a wholeplanet map for those who like to choose how to flow their time across boxes -Mark I dont know if you have had a chnace to debrief Portland citizens on the YUnUS day you had- this is Londoner's ongoing attempt to piece together every flow that hapened on Feb 15 the day Dr Yunus brought his intercity forum networks and first 1000 bhookclub readers to London http://worldentrepreneur.net/_wsn/page4.html

We are focusing  on Entrepreneurial Revolutions ; the greatest of our human race started in 2008 "Future Capitalism" 1 2 (mail info@worldcitizen.tv if you know of a more exciting www (win-win-win call to Entrepreneurial Revolution than the transcript enjoyed by 700 London Economics Revolutonaries on Feb 15 2008,cheerled by a man who is 68 years young) My dad, who is 85 years young and first explored economics whilst waiting in Bangladesh to navigate lanes for the Royal Air Force, has been propagating ER for 33 years thru all sorts of media including: surveys 1 2 3 in The Economist from 1976 onwards future history books including this 1984 netizen guide to local-global sustainability roundtables of which the first in 1977 was hosted by Romano Prodi in Venice to celebrate the Italian translation of Entrepreneurial Revolution 1976 and a recent 08 example at St James' Royal Auto Club is shown

info@worldcitizen.tv asks : do you want to join our correspondents of  3-in-one blogs :  http://futurecapitalism.blogspot.com - top 2 questions- what global markets do we know to already be playing future capitalism - eg banking for the poor, fast healthy foods for the world's most nutritionally deprived kids , and what 100 global markets do you wish to be the premier league of FC  (water? energy? health?, west coast internet billionaire mediamakers) if human sustainability is to be global's outcome in every community  http://hitrust.blogspot.com what games and human races do we -connecting london and intercity collaboration forum and changing BBC - want to be as famous as olymipcs spectator sports by 2012 BusinessWeek When the Bottom Line Is Ending Poverty BusinessWeek - Feb 29, 2008 While Gandhi's goal was the end of colonialism, Yunus' is just as grand: He means to reform capitalism to make it a tool for ending poverty http://yunusworld.blogspot.com YUnUS blog for people who have met yunus or have read his book or make it their next mission to try to meet him where 3 questions mark has been videoing are: *what inspired you by yunus book? * what will you always do differently because of the book? * if 5 people sitting in Dhaka want to share yunus community building social ABC with any of 6.5 billion beings who need that, what sorts of networking tools and intercity collaborations can we flow together

some interesting, and I think positive, stuff on kiva:

http://kivanews.blogspot.com/ written mainly by Kiva stuff

the founder talking about the ricky dynamics of stored value http://www.socialedge.org/blogs/ kiva-chronicles/archive/2008/03/ 01/escheat-me

and goodness me matt writes about cockfighting on 29 march http://www.socialedge.org/blogs/ kiva-chronicles which brings us back to this odd circle; if the justification is that we back the local MFI's partners right to choose what's ok to be posted as a project needing a loan, then the criteria on which Kiva chooses MFI's does seem to be essential reading

I'm searching the old place for stuff related to microcredit - that which was prompted by kiva therads I will put here:

By Stewart Craine (CCAL30) (30), Sun, 01 Apr 2007 08:27:08 PDT Comment feedback score: 5 (* * * * *) Another option - target financed products, not just finance. If you give a loan for $100 for a small solar home system for someone, or $500 for a year of working capital for a small business, you charge 2% interest and the MFI chargers 20% or something like that, and the cash is used to buy products to then sell. Short circuit the process - finance the product. Loan $500 value to a micro energy retailer, but do so by helping their supplier give supplier credit, by loaning to them instead. Then the purchase cost is only $400, and 25% profit is made on the way. You get half, the supplier gets half - an extra 12.5% profit for even less loan capital. So you end up giving a loan for higher value than the cash you used to pay for it. Take it to the extreme. We (www.barefootpower.com) are buying a 1W solar home LED lighting system in China for $10. It retails for say $25 = cost for retailer is $20. A microVC invests $100 to globalVC.com to support an shop in Africa to sell a few of these. For $200 ($100 from the shopowner, $100 loan), they can buy 10 kits and sell them for $250, within 3 months. Short term, low risk. They can pay back $110 happily, and keep $140 - that's 40% interest per year for the microVC and partner to share between them. Get in the profit margin of distributing products as well as the interest from finance, and you have two streams of income, not one (and the second stream is more lucrative anyway). Not only can this be a higher margin model, it almost MUST be used to get finance to low density rural villages, to cover the cost of delivering products (financial, hardware, whatever, gotta bundle it to cover delivery costs) Joel Robinson said: After thinking on this problem for a couple of years I've found that there are three critical parts to sustaining a Kiva or GlobeFunder model. The Non Governmental Organizations and MF Banks that manage the loans Need to be supported by traditional aid mechanisms & Donations. Overhead cost incurred to manage the programs should not be supported in anyway by the loans. A ranking and/or feedback mechanism needs to be in place for each organization providing the loans so that those who successfully manage thier loan programs will attract investors and those that poorly manage thier programs will not. You should at least provide a token interest rate back to the lender. What do you think?

Reflections from Matt Flannery, a pioneer of modern microfinance BY CATHY SUN

This HBR kiva interview http://hprsite.squarespace.com/l ending-and-leading-042008/ may shed light:

typical quote

MF: Microfinance can be very profitable. It's a great business model and pretty much everywhere around the world that it's being employed, it's taking off. It's growing exponentially worldwide—it’s one of the most rapidly growing sectors in the world. That's really wonderful, and some people step in and latch onto that with profit maximizing mentality. Some people come to that phenomenon with a humanitarian aid mentality. For me, I think the best course is probably right in the middle.

People are using business to enact social change. That's what I'm most excited about, when you create a business that's primarily focused on social change, you use the tools of capitalism to help bring about social change. There's a lot of predatory lenders out there using code words such as microfinance to get rich, to mislead people, and I've seen it, and I hate it. I don't mind making a profit, but there's a way to do it in a transparent way that gives the poor a fair deal. That's the way it should work.

my beef with flannery - I and do have a beef with him - is that he's dilluting the systemic models of MFI

1 he did not choose his list of partners from those who knew what it was like to have to transform conflicts in a community as the piece before the lending bit

2 his description of partners does not seem to mirror the sort of google.org process of where is entrepreneurship ready to take off if we provide fair finance and peer communities to support each others' entrepreneurial start up experiences

I think kiva is a clever web, even an useful one, but because its not wholly governed by microcredit logics, its fame and its claim to be modernising MF is specious

Chris, MF, MC, are not what you would define them any more than cars are not what GM defines them as. As much as I admire and respect M.Y., he is not God and does not have all of the answers. I think I prefer a world where different people can look at the world and its problems and come up with different solutions. If we all focus on a single solution to the exclusion of all others, then we are going to miss the next M.Y.

linda I am not looking for a single solution - at the same time we need one other atlas from global big brither down to unite people around

I dont know what you mean when you send mails (here and eslewheer) saying colaboration isnt what I talk about or MF and MC are not how I describe them. There are 2 distinctions to make: of course every model is most valuable for how people discuss it , improve it, make even more human truth with it- but it is also the case that systems are driven by what is measured, and to that extent understanding what metrics are being used by whom, and why some groups of people pass themselves off as being in one group when they are not is of cricial importance

you may recall in onet , martin rizzi contantly opined how awful MF was- in mexico that is true when you look at this disgrace

the IPO of a Mexican MFI, Compartamos, in the spring of 2007. The IPO, a secondary offering, was a wild financial success. Investors valued the company so highly that Accion, a nonprofit microfinance network that put $1 million of equity into the MFI through its subsidiary investment fund in 2000, sold half of its shares for $140 million. The senior management and directors, who together held the largest single stake in the bank, received $91 million through selling only 7.4% of the total outstanding shares.

here is a sample of te main topics to be debated at http://microcreditsummit.org -it was this network hosted since 1997by http://www.results.org in washington Dc that seet the united 8-year goal to reach 100 million familes with poverty-ending microcredit

kiva has not been central to this network which is fine (and I even quite like some aspects of kiva) but I dont like to see one group cliamning credit fir someone else's results

Plenary Session

 Compartamos IPO: Lessons for Asia and the World of Microfinance Panelist | Prof. Muhammad Yunus, Managing Director, Grameen Bank, Bangladesh

1. The Future of Microfinance: Visioning the Who, What, When, Where, Why, and How of Microfinance Expansion Over the Next 10 Years Panelist | Mr. Syed M Hashemi, Senior Microfinance Specialist, The World Bank-CGAP, United States Panelist | Prof. Muhammad Yunus, Managing Director, Grameen Bank, Bangladesh

2. Solving the Problems of Asian Urban Slums: Innovations with and beyond Microfinance Panelist | Mr. Ruben C. De Lara, Executive Director, TSPI Development Corporation, Philippines

3. Transformation of Microfinance Operations from NGO to a Regulated MFI while Maintaining Social Mission Panelist | Dr. Shafiq Dhanani, Chief Commissioner, Mitra Bisnis Keluarga Ventura - Family Business Partners"", Indonesia Panelist | Mr. David S. Gibbons, Executive Chairman, CASHPOR Micro Credit, India Panelist | Mr. Phan Ho, Deputy Director General, National Bank of Cambodia, Cambodia

4. Governance: Organizing, Developing, and Empowering the Board to Oversee the MFI Panelist | Mr. Gregory Casagrande, Founder and Chairman, South Pacific Business Development Foundation, Western Samoa Panelist | Ms. Jayshree Vyas, Managing Director, Shri Mahila Sewa Sahakari Bank, Ltd., India

5. Commercial Bank Participation in Microfinance: Options and Opportunities Panelist | Dr. Balkrishna Kulkarni, Director, Grameen Trust India (Liaison of Grameen Trust, Bangladesh), India Panelist | Mr. Annamalai Ramanathan, Chief General Manager, National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development, India

6. The Floodgates are Open: Channeling the Flows of Funds for Microfinance Effectively Panelist | Mr. Ian Callaghan, Executive Director, Morgan Stanley & Co.International Limited, United Kingdom Panelist | Prof. S. M. Huzzatul Islam Latifee, Managing Director, Grameen Trust, Bangladesh Panelist | Ms. Roshaneh Zafar, President, Kashf Foundation, Pakistan

7. Innovations in Reducing Costs and Enhancing Productivity Panelist | Ms. Sadaffe Abid, Chief Executive Officer, Kashf Foundation, Pakistan Panelist | Ms. Anh-Tuyet Dinh, Managing Director, Binh Minh Community Development Consulting Company, Vietnam Panelist | Mr. Md. Enamul Haque, Executive Vice President, Association for Social Advancement, Bangladesh Panelist | Dr. L.H. Manjunath, Executive Director, Shri Kshethra Dharmasthala Rural Development Project, India

8. Challenges in Microfinance, both in Agriculture and in Areas with Low Population Density Panelist | Dr. Rashid Bajwa, Chief Executive Officer, National Rural Support Programme, Pakistan Panelist | Mr. Meghraj Gajurel, Senior Manager, Rural Microfinance Development Centre Ltd., Nepal Panelist | Mr. Md. Abdus Sobhan, Senior Principal Officer, Bangladesh Krishi Bank, Bangladesh

 Building Financial Systems that Work for the Majority: Local Currency Borrowing, On-Lending Savings, Autonomous Credit Funds, and Appropriate Legal Framework Panelist | Mr. Fazle Hasan Abed, Chairperson, Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee, Bangladesh

Chris wrote:

...you may recall in onet , martin rizzi contantly opined how awful MF was- in mexico that is true when you look at this disgrace

Whoa - YES - I do remember and I also remember many people trying through PM's to reason with Martin and/or offer help and support for any initiatives he had.

And I remember many being cyber-slapped for not offering the "right" sort of help or for not understanding the way Martin wanted them to.

And I remember many, many threads being hijacked by Martin with very single-minded posts that were almost completely off topic but that he justified on the grounds that his cause was more dire/important/moral than that of the original thread.......and then more PM's trying to reason with him gently.

Basically, despite many gentle and lovely emails with Martin, I remember Martin being so single-minded and dogmatic in trying to push his passionate point that he divided rather than unified, berated rather than educated and judged others harshly - to the detriment of his purpose on O-Net.

Martin - for me - was not a good example to wheel out!!!

I had much of the same feel of martin wherever his posts interacted

on reflection however, my point was- possibly he was right to report that all was not well with microfinance in mexico

just cos microfinance can do wonders if mapped the way it was originated - there are many cases of absolute disasters

it would be useful if we could collate these in some thread

disaster 1 - letting mfi's start up with too little resources -in rwanda anyone with $9000 could start an MFI

The MFIs that were closed include Intambwe SA, Ongera Microfinance SA, Gwiza Microfinance SA, CMF Urugero SA, Urumuri Microfinance SA, Coopec Intera, Coopec Iwacu and Coopec Ubumwe Iwacu.

"BNR cannot remain indifferent to the situation currently prevailing in the microfinance sector, where people risk losing their savings placed in some of the microfinance institutions, and therefore compromising the future of this sector in Rwanda," said the Governor, Mr. Francios Kanimba, in a statement.

Microfinance At The Crossroads on Forbes

Lending and Leading: Reflections from Matt Flannery, a pioneer of modern microfinance

Namibians line up for free cash on BBC

an indian kiva?

http://www.rangde.org/rangde/ind ex.htm

Another Indian Kiva: http://www.dhanax.com/

I'm going to move these to the Microfinance/Microloan/Microcredit group in a workspace so they can be organized and added to.

Does anyone have a view on what is the optimal number of kiva. Clearly kiva-type spaces (is the phrase white box http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whi te_box_%28software_engineering%2 9 ) can be orientated around geography or application or language (or other culture defining whom you wish to help) but how many does the world need?

I am assuming this is a difficult question- for example unlike an auction where larger is usually better so that anytime you have a need to buy or sell there's a free market there, I'd personally like to openly access maps round confederations of micros- deeply local in how they choose what needs funding but certified to a world level of trust and gatekeeping donors' diversity of interests

New Kiva 1:1 matching program with a credit card company: http://www.kivab4b.org/

Do we have any experienced kiva investors here? I spent 30 minutes looking through kiva yesterday and got a feeling that's its a very mixed church. Perhaps one has to give kiva different rankings by country or partner - I find afghanistan one probaly best place of kiva