Kiva Microfunds
http://www.kiva.org
Charity Category:
Hunger & Poverty
Kiva´s mission is to connect people through lending for the sake of alleviating poverty.
We're grateful for your tax-deductible donations to support Kiva's operational costs as a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization. Every dollar counts, whether it's used to help us serve entrepreneurs in new countries, develop our innovative technology platform, or just to pay the rent. Kiva is the world's first person-to-person micro-lending website, empowering individuals to lend directly to unique entrepreneurs around the globe. The people you see on Kiva's site are real individuals in need of funding - not marketing material. Kiva partners with existing expert microfinance institutions. In doing so, we gain access to outstanding entrepreneurs from impoverished communities world-wide. Our partners are experts in choosing qualified entrepreneurs. That said, they are usually short on funds. Through Kiva, our partners upload their entrepreneur profiles directly to the site so others can lend to them. Kiva provides a data-rich, transparent lending platform. We are constantly working to make the system more transparent to show how money flows throughout the entire cycle, and what effect it has on the people and institutions lending it, borrowing it, and managing it along the way. To do this, we are using the power of the internet to facilitate one-to-one connections that were previously prohibitively expensive. Child sponsorship has always been a high overhead business. Kiva creates a similar interpersonal connection at much lower costs due to the instant, inexpensive nature of internet delivery. The individuals featured on our website are real people who need a loan and are waiting for socially-minded individuals to lend them money.