New Milepoint Lending Team [general info]

Well done.

...and, as noted in the goals thread, we just passed $250,000 this month a few moments ago.

Just saw this on the Kiva site. There's a webinar in just under an hour on why Kiva doesn't lend in certain countries. I think there's still time to join in:

http://www.kiva.org/updates/kiva/2011/10/12/kiva-webinar-series-part-3-why-kiva.html

Thanks for this. I just registered, moved an appointment and will be there! A subject very near to my obsessions.

Please could you post a brief executive summary after the webinar.

I just registered, too. Maybe we can each report a summary here for those who can't attend.

Great minds think alike!

A summary would be great. I just saw this but will probably not have time to login and listen.

Team stats as of today at 1715 GMT:
Number of Team Members: 438
Number of Loans: 13,168
Number of Loans per Member: 30.1
Total Amount Loaned: $622,450

Will the lending never stop or slow down this month?

During the webinar there was comment about the high cost of flights for Kiva. We should find a way to donate miles for them!

Here are my notes from the Webinar:

Why doesn't Kiva offer loans in Country X?

http://www.brighttalk.com/webcast/6575/35933

This is one of the top questions that lenders ask Kiva. It has been asked over 1400 times.

Kiva already has Field Partners in 60 countries. Some countries with frequent enquiries include India, China, Brazil, Ethiopia, Haiti, Egypt, Nepal, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Australia, Canada....

Some of these actually do have a Kiva presence, notably Afghanistan, Haiti, Nepal. But in these cases, the field partners are very small, and loans from such countries get funded very quickly. So any given lender may simply not happen to log on to Kiva when loans are available from such a country. Kiva is actively looking for new Field Partners in all three of these countries, to expand its presence there.

There are a number of challenges to starting Kiva lending in any given country:

1. Regulatory issues. There are challenging legal issues in operating the Kiva model in some countries, such as India, China and Bangladesh. One of the issues is that Kiva uses US Dollars. India has strict regulations about repatriation of foreign currency. Any foreign funds that enter India must remain there for 3 years, which would be incompatible with, say, a six-month loan being repaid. There are similar issues in China. In fact, Kiva has been working on finding a way to lend to India for over 4.5 years.
2. Lack of appropriate Field Partners. In some cases, such as Canada, there is either not a well-developed microfinance industry, or perhaps this sort of work is done through government economic development agencies that don't fit the Kiva model, or it could be that existing Microfinance Institutions (MFIs) either don't fit the model, or aren't interested in partnering with Kiva. To be an appropriate Field Partner, a given MFI needs to have a strong social mission, and have the wherewithal to work on the Internet to communicate with Kiva, post loans, provide updates and so on.
3. Operational costs for Kiva can also be an issue. Partnering with any given MFI in any given country requires some travel and communications in order to set up and manage a partnership. The cost of flying, for example, to Australia or Kazakhstan is an issue in developing a presence in those countries.
4. Sometimes it's just a question of opportunity. When an opportunity to enter a new country presents itself, Kiva is willing to work with that country. There is no country that Kiva has consciously decided not to work in.

A number of questions were asked about specific countries, and in general the answer had to do with one or more of the above four points.

A couple of takeaway points:

1. The growth strategy for 2012 will focus more on expanding Kiva's presence in existing countries through finding new Field Partners, rather than expanding into new countries. Nevertheless, there are several new countries being actively worked on, including India, Yemen, Laos, Zambia. Expansion efforts are underway in places such as Afghanistan, Haiti, and Nepal. Kiva would very much like to expand into countries near existing countries, such as Argentina and Brazil, for example.
2. Kiva lenders and supporters can help by providing local knowledge about field partners and the regulatory system.
3. Kiva is still a small organization. It is open to partnering with appropriate MFIs in any country. But each new partnership and each new country does take time to put in place.

Comments and questions are welcome either on the Facebook page: www.facebook.com/kiva or by e-mail: contactus@kiva.organd any information or connections lenders might have about specific countries that would help Kiva to move into those countries would be gratefully received.

The webinar was recorded and is available at the link above.

Thanks for the summary and very good info to take away. jbcarioca made a good point about cost or travel and I hope that we can integrate this into the lasting legacy of the Do (or even before) -- using mileage donation to help Kiva as an organization (beyond loans to entrpreneurs).

I will add my thanks for the exec summary. Very informative. I did not know that Canada was even on Kiva's radar.

Glad to do it. Canada is very much on Kiva's radar for a number of reasons. I read some time ago that Canada had more Kiva lenders per capita than any other country. (That statistic may have changed, of course, but it's still impressive!) And of course people like the idea of helping at home as much as away. So I imagine a number of Canadians have asked Kiva why they don't have a partner in Canada. I suspect one of the issues with respect to Canada is that there are so many government programmes for local economic development that don't really fit the Kiva model. But if an appropriate microfinance institution were to arrive on the scene, I should think Kiva would be interested in partnering.

IIRC some credit unions toyed with the idea of microfinancing.

This is an important point re: Canada, as there has been concern that while not loans, but donations to Kiva itself are hampered by whether they are eligible for tax donation and income tax filings. This would also apply to other nations in similar to Australia and for loaners across the world.

Credit unions began doing just that. The Raiffeisen in Germany began in the 1850's as a means to help poor famers join together with shared facilities, wheat mills and bakeries. They came to the Americas in 1900 when Alphonse Desjardins started La Caisse Populaire de Levis which became Caisse Popular Desjardins. Desjardins also started the first credit union in the USA. Long before that during the first years of the Song Dynasty in China mutual help societies were established that were the true precursors of micro-lending, and they invented paper money too. Of course, in the modern context we credit Muhammed Younes beginning in 1976.

I have long studied this subject and have been working on a history of micro-lending for some time.

There has been some periodic discussion about whether it is possible to get tax receipts for Kiva donations. Based on what little knowledge I have of charity law in Canada, it's not immediately obvious how to do that.

One thing that some people have done is to set up a Kiva club at their local church, then donate to the church for the purpose of lending through the Kiva club. The donation can attract a tax receipt and the money is then managed in perpetuity by the Kiva club members. For obvious reasons, the money could not ever be withdrawn, and I'm not certain that a donation could legally be sent from the church to Kiva. (A transfer to a registered Canadian charity is legal, but the rub is that Kiva is not a registered Canadian charity.)

This gambit is fraught with a number of potential problems, and I personally don't endorse it.

I am wary of such third party gifting.

Quite right! The Grameen Bank model is in many ways quite similar to its ancestors. Le Mouvement Desjardins is now one of the biggest financial institutions in Quebec, and still the go-to organization for many people for their banking needs. Although it is technically a collection of quasi-independent credit unions, it looks in many respects like a big bank, issuing mortgages, credit cards, small business loans, insuracne and all the usual financial instruments, alongside small deposit and chequing accounts.

I'd love to read your history when it's finished.

It is fraught with a number of potential problems, and I personally don't endorse it. But I reported it as a possible mechanism for getting a tax receipt for Kiva activity. I should have said as much in my post, and will edit to clear that up.

CRA (our taxman) does not recognize Kiva as a registered charity.

My comment was a general one and not in response to your previous post.

The terms and conditions page of Kiva mention tax deductibility of Kiva loans. Paraphrased... they are not deductible because they are loans, not an outright donation.... at least for the IRS here in the US.

Correct. The question for Kiva all along has been whether there is some way in which they can satisfy the requirements to become recognized as a charity by the CRA. To date, they have (obviously) not found a way to do that.