Yes I think it could work much like you envision, Mark.

What I'm not at all sure of is whether Kiva would be interested in separate relationships with the ned locations. Thinking outloud, what I do know is that these days they don't start new relationships with mfis that have less than 1000 clients - they still have more lenders than borrowers at the site, so they are looking for their partners to scale as much as possible. Given the interface set-up work that they have to do on the back end, the partner pages, the account management, etc. I can understand their need to work with larger orgs.

One of the reasons (I now realize) we have never been able to achieve the scale that I'd originally intended/planned for the microfinance program is that the LiA community was not able to absorb the expansion to include members of other communities. So while there is definitely potential for the microfinance programs to expand in both locations, I'm not sure we should expect miracles in the near future. If, on the other hand, we can also provide access to the Kiva opportunity to other existing communities through the Life in Africa connection (without all the other member programs tagged on), then we could foreseeably scale the LiA presence on Kiva to the scale that Kiva would like to see it within a couple of months.

ReachOut Mbuya is an HIV/AIDS community that is an ideal one when I think about this - they have a community microfinance program already but are limited in capital. They serve over 2000 families and have staff that's already computer literate enough to be able to learn how to upload to the Kiva site. Whoever extends microloan funds to other groups will have to have some kind of guarantee mechanisms (including a guarantee fund) in place. I think LiA may better positioned to handle that than each center separately will be as far as the Kiva loans are concerned. So basically that gives an oversight role to LiA for the portfolio on Kiva that comes through community based orgs instead of MFIs.

I'm thinking aloud right now - need to ponder a couple more things before this can make more sense.