Kiva Business 4 Business Community

I've been stumbling across small businesses that are promoting their support of Kiva. All along, we believed that KivaB4B would be an opportunity for Advanta to provide tools for small businesses to promote their support of Kiva...aka, cause related marketing is not just for the big boys.

J.K. Rowling, author of the best-selling Harry Potter book series, recently gave a great commencement speech at Harvard. In her speech, the second of her two primary themes was the power of imagination. She said, "Imagination is not only the uniquely human capacity to envision that which is not, and therefore the fount of all invention and innovation. In its arguably most transformative and revelatory capacity, it is the power that enables us to empathize with humans whose experiences we have never shared." Making loans to individuals through Kiva actually feeds that part of our imagination...it offers a unique perspective into lives that we will likely never know "in reality

While at the Harmony Festival, I got a recurring question:  "What about microloans for companies in the US?"

After all, there are many areas - which are struggling - that could use credit (even a small amount).

Actually, this is what Accion International is doing (this is according to a piece in the Daily Herald).  For example, in Chicago, the average microloan is about $7,668, with an interest rate of 12.5%.  Some of the borrowers include:  a printer, jewelry store, hair salon and janitorial service.  What's more, a large percentage of them are immigrants.

So, click here to check out the article in the Daily Herald.

It's amazing that it's already been a couple of months since the official launch party for KivaB4B. This video is short and sweet, but gives a real flavor of the event which seemed to find a balance between shwanky and home grown. I suppose it was the friends who were visiting from a bunch of different countries and the DJ spinning tribal electronica. Check it out.

For those of you have never been to a music festival in Northern California, it's hard to put it into words. You have the chance to meet unique people named, 'Noodle,' 'Crystal Head' and 'Bike Hugger.' You may even have a chance to take a 'Hippie Bath,' which I learned is a head to toe spritzing of, in my case, lavender scented holy water. If you are trying to set up a booth, don't depend on finding things very easily. There are good intentions and then there's good organization...and perhaps the two don't always go together.

That said, it was a fascinating experience and we learned a lot about how people respond to microcredit, in general, and Kiva and KivaB4B, in particular.

Our first takeaway was that people love Kiva...see my post 'To Know Kiva is to Love Kiva.'  Talking about KivaB4B and the co-branded card was easy with this group.

However, it wasn't as easy to bridge the gap between some of the other groups we encountered. For example:

1. There were many folks who had heard of Kiva...they would say something like, "oh, yeah...I remember Kiva. I heard about them on Oprah." 
2. Then, there were those who had heard of micro credit, but not Kiva.
   
3. Finally, there were those who hadn't heard of either, but were pulled in by the 'helping entrepreneurs' message.
   

Talking about microcredit and Kiva was easy. We could actually invite people into the experience. However, finding a way to take that step to the credit card will take some creative thinking. 

Nancy Price is the cofounder of SheKnows.com (which got its start in 1999).  She is also a big-time Kiva fan.

For example, she has "helped buy cows in Azerbaijan, food in the Dominican Republic, clothing in Kenya and fund construction in Mexico."  And, of course, it was all from her computer.

Yet, as she notes, the process isn't impersonal.  Basically, on Kiva you can easily search for entrepreneurs and read the profiles.  When you make a loan, you'll also get periodic updates.

She also mentions that Kiva gets a lot of help from PayPal, Google and Yahoo! (such as in terms of processing and advertising).

So click here to check out her post.

I first heard of micro loans years ago when the Grameen Bank began their innovative program of helping small entrepreneurs in the Third World, and I thought it was a brilliant concept. Then more recently, when I learned about Kiva, I thought that it was one of the very best ideas I had ever heard of, and I realized that it is a great opportunity for me, as just one person, to be able to help in a meaningful way. I was really inspired and immediately picked four women to receive my loans.

It is such a great feeling to know that I can participate directly in the Kiva/Advanta partnership, so that a small loan I give to a Third World entrepreneur can make a big difference in her life and help her advance her business and result in financial security for her and her family.

Poverty is the root cause of much of the world's problems - wars, disease, hopelessness, environmental damage, crime, drug trafficking and more. Now, because of the brilliant partnership between Kiva and Advanta, ordinary people who want to do something meaningful can take direct action.

I hope that when millions of people in the developed world learn about the Kiva B4B Community, they will realize what a powerful force for positive change it truly is, and they will get involved.

I was glad to be invited to Philadelphia to participate in the launch of the B4B program and meet Senerita, one of the women whose small business I had made a loan to. In fact, I was so inspired from that experience that I added another four loans to my list.

I focus on lending to women because when you help women, you automatically help their children, and also because women in Third World countries usually have the least amount of personal power, and building their own business can help change that.

I hope many people will read about Senerita, watch some of the video that Erick took and displays in other parts of this blog, and then go to www.kiva.org and start making some micro loans! -- Karil Daniels

At the super groovy Harmony Festival in Santa Rosa spreading the KivaB4B gospel. Although we are not the typical booth here, we 're enjoying the Native American flutes, the thumping electronica and the Aboriginal didgeridoos...although all three at the same time from all directions can be a bit unsettling. Perhaps it's the enthusiasm of the crowd or maybe the inevitable contact high, but there's an amazing thing that happens when people see and recognize the name 'KIVA' on our materials. Not once does someone say anything like, 'Oh, Kiva, they're pretty cool,' rather, there's a twinkle in the eye as they say something like, "KIVA! I LOVE KIVA!!!' It makes it a lot easier when people are so enthusiastic.




yes, that is George Clinton.

This is a cool idea for a company devoted to entrepreneurship. "This past December, Inc.com embarked on an editorial project to cover the rapidly growing phenomenon of microfinance. As a staff, we contributed a modest sum and became lenders on Kiva.org, sponsoring a diverse group of entrepreneurs that includes Phal An, as well as business owners located in Peru, Ecuador, Uganda, Tanzania, and Tajikistan. Updates on these entrepreneurs and their businesses and how they are using their loans are being posted frequently on a new Inc.com blog called "The Kiva Connection."

The most recent post is a great interview with a rice winemaker from Cambodia. Link here.

Paul Marsden on his ClickAdvisor blog wrote a very flattering post about Advanta's two latest initiatives, ideablob.com and kivaB4B. He referred to them as 'crowdsourcing' and 'crowdfunding' platforms. I hadn't heard the term 'crowdfunding' before, but it definitely describes Kiva well.

I don't think we could have gotten a quote as supportive as this even if we went out a did a pay for blog post kind of program (hmmm....how much do those cost?). Paul says,  "In a nutshell, we think kivab4b is brilliant. We just wish Advanta cards were available in the UK - we'd change credit card providers in a flash for this, it's brilliant marketing, smart use of digital media, and exemplary CSR. Other brands - particularly, financial services brands, could learn from this..." 

Really...who can get enough of Senerita? Ok, I'm biased. I spent a bunch of time with her and her husband a fell in love with their kind and open spirits. This video clip is based on an interview with Karil Daniels, an independent filmmaker from San Francisco who has made a bunch of grants through Kiva to women entrepreneurs around the world. Because she used an Advanta business credit card on the Kiva site, Advanta invited her to come to Philadelphia to meet Senerita, one of the recipients of her grants. It was the first time that a Kiva borrower and a Kiva lender met in the US. I had the chance to spend time with them together in the city. You can see some of the pictures from one of the series of posts from 'Senerita's story.' (click here for some of the story and pictures)

Knowledge@Wharton has a great piece on the impact of Kiva.org.  Interestingly enough, the cofounders of the site -- Matt and Jessica Flannery - got a lot of pushback when they initially pitched the idea; that is, venture capitalists thought it would not scale, attorneys were guarded and non-profits were skeptical (was this just another dot-com idea to make a mint?)

Of course, such stuff is moot now.  By all accounts, Kiva.org is a huge success and it continues to grow apace.  There are even imitators, such as eBay's MicroPlace.

And, according to Knowledge@Wharton:

"Kiva mixes the entrepreneurial daring of Google with the do-gooder ethos of Bono, the lead singer of the rock band U2. And with it, the Flannerys have managed to merge two recent socio-economic trends -- social networking and microfinance."

Click here to check out the full piece.

Jake De Grazia, on his blog, 'A More Perfect Market,' has a cool post about 'Epic Change,' an organization that "helps people in need share their stories to acquire resources that will change their lives."

Jake says, "Epic Change is part of the next generation of the Ndugu Model." It's good to remember that there are other organizations creatively leveraging social media and other technology to make it easier for us to connect with people in need around the world.

So what is the Ndugu model? Jake continues...

"If anyone has ever seen About Schmidt you'll remember Ndugu. In the movie, Warren Schmidt, a newly retired midwestern widower played by Jack Nicholson, is up late one night watching TV, when he sees an ad for a sponsor a child type charity. Searching for purpose in his post-career, post-marraige life, he makes an impulse donation and, days later, gets a thick envelope in the mail telling him that he has adopted Ndugu, a Tanzanian first grader. The package encourages him to contact Ndugu directly and leads him to write a stream of hysterically and touchingly long letters about the trials, tribulations, life, and legacy of Warren Schmidt.

So. The Ndugu Model: direct support to individuals, philanthropy brought to life by human contact and return interaction. This being the '90s, instead of letters, checks, print photographs, and drawings in the mail, we have video streaming and blogs and mobile devices beaming OMG LOLs across continents.

And, either way, whether in its old sponsor a child form or in its more scalable online instantiations, the model's good. It pulls small donors deep into causes. It educates. It inspires. It engages. It reminds everyone that we can all contribute; we can all make meaningful change."

Jake then goes to say that "Kiva deserves a lot of credit for putting the online Ndugu Model on the map."