A young girl from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Jessica Jackley Flannery along with her husband, Matthew Flannery, began Kiva with two thoughts in mind

1. Love
2. The Internet

Britt Bravo had an exclusive interview with Jessica to see just how Kiva came about.  Jessica started going on mission trips when she was in high school gained a passion for missions and poverty immediately.  From then she did a “Semester at Seas”, where she saw 14 different countries in 3 months.  While attending Stanford Business School she talked to everyone she could from the head of Village Enterprise Fund to anyone knowing remotely anything about technology. 

Jessica’s goal: to create a nonprofit Internet based micro loaning business that allows philanthropists to loan money to budding entrepreneurs in poverty stricken countries.

So have Jessica and Matthew achieved their goal? I think that the best way to see the success of this organization is through a video of real people helping real people….
Nicholas Krist using Kiva

Can anything new be said about Kiva?  Probably not, but not too many people seems to know or talk about Kiva Lending Teams, so let’s explore them.

The beta version for the Kiva lending teams came out in late August of this year, and now there are 5,553 teams.  The lending teams do not actually lend the money, individuals lend their own money, they can just said that this money goes towards the Australia lending team’s goals, or whatever team they choose.

Setting up teams seems a little peculiar at first, but after looking at the teams for about a minute, it made perfect sense.  Why would a team make sense when they do not make any decisions?  Well one reason is competition.

Many of the top groups are very politically charged groups, for example:  “Kiva Christians,” “Team Obama,” and “Atheists, Agnostics, Skeptics, Freethinkers, Secular Humanists and the Non-Religious.”  If you are a competitive person, like me, and you see that the Atheist group has lent more money than the Christian group, you are going to want to loan more money.

To join the Kiva Christian group and donate money was my first thought, but by the time I scrolled down to the bottom of the page I was laughing at myself.  If the Christian group loans more money than the Atheist group, does that prove anything?  No.  It’s foolish to think that for even a second.

I think that the Kiva teams encourage more loans and probably have some very functional uses, but I think that it is important to check you motives when you join one.

I’ve taken a bunch of entrepreneurship classes, read a bunch of articles, and heard a lot of people talk about entrepreneurship and they all say that the best ideas are the simplest ones.  They are the ideas that people get as soon as you explain it to them.  Fmylife.com is the perfect example.

Fmylife.com is a blog to post humorous recollections “of everyday anecdotes likely to happen to anyone.”  People post short stories about unfortunate events that happened to them that day.  Here’s an example, “Today, I was walking my husky when she saw a cat and bolted toward it.  I coudn’t let go of the leash because my hand was tangled up.  Forced to run along, I ran into a parked van at full sprint.  I lost my dog, broke two ribs and have to pay for the dent in the van.  FML”

I can’t tell you how many people have told me about fmylife.com in the past week, it’s unbelievable.  It is especially incredible considering the site was launched in English in January and by March 6, the Wall Street Journal reported that it had one million visitors daily.  As of today, fmylife.com’s site rank is 3,275.

Fmylife.com is a spin off of the French site VieDeMerde.fr.  This site was developed by two French entrepreneurs and launched in January 08.  They have now published a book in France with their VDM stories, have one of the top ten most visited sites in France, and are publishing a book in English with FML stories that is coming out this summer.

Fmylife.com is an incredibly simple site; it is just a blog.  Not only that, but it isn’t even that asthetically pleasing (this site far surpasses it).  Fmylife.com makes money through advertising, through publishing books, and all of their matterial comes from the user.  All fmylife has to do is maintain the site and weed through the stories users submit to find good ones to publish. 

Not only is the cost of running the business low, but contributors are able to laugh at the bad stuff going on in their lives, and readers are able to laugh at their own troubles seeing that they often do not compare to others issues.  What a great business!… or is it?

While much of the content on the website is truely funny, if you haven’t guessed so far from the name of the website, which stands for f*** my life, much of the content is also very crass and vulgar, and this is a question the entrepreneur needs to look at.  Just because there is a great way to legally make a lot of money, does that mean an entrepreneur should do it?   …more on that in weeks to come.

Some of you may ask what in the world does and ice rink and Grove City College have anything to do with the internet. Well everything, in a sense. The Entrepreneurship Club here at GCC has been working with the school administration to have an outdoor roll away ice rink that would be open to student for free on Thorn field under the lights from after Thanksgiving break until the weather gets too warm.

To get to this point has taken a lot of hard work and research to put together a feasibility study of the plan to present to the school. Here’s where the internet comes into play. The group conducted a majority of it’s research for the ice rink online. In fact, the group has even received quotes from an online ice rink retailer from www.nicerink.com.

The process the Entrepreneurship Student Group has gone through illustrates a handful of important concepts about the internet. The itnernet is a great place to do research for purchases and more importantly business plans. Second, the internet serves as a great medium for business, otherwise known as e-commerce. Third, the fact that nicerink.com was a top organic search result on google illustrates the importance of SEO in e-commerce.

SEO is an important feature for any online business and pays in unexpected ways. I am sure the investment nicerink.com has made into SEO and their business website will be more than worth it when  GCC purchases the rink and liner from them.

On a side note this is where you come in. Help point out another useful application of the internet by commenting on this blog and giving your feedback about what you think of the ice rink. You can even post questions. This ice rink is a very real opportunity the school is pursuing. The more support and school voice behind it the better it is going to be.

If you are not familiar with Kiva, here’s a brief overview of how Kiva.org works. In a nutshell Kiva.org uses the internet as a medium between impoverished entrepreneurs across the globe who are unable to raise funds and match them with everyday people to serve as microloan lenders. you may say there is know way I am going to loan my money to some poor entrepreneur in a in a third world country. It will just be squandered and I won’t ever see it again. Here’s why you should change your mind.

REASON 1: Kiva Appropriately Targets Stable But Needy Economies/Communities

Microfinancing is not an appropriate approach to take to help solve world poverty in all communities. Environments where there are conditions such as wide geographical disbursement and disease make repayment difficult and are thus are inappropriate environments for microloans. Rather Kiva creates partnerships with hundreds of existing microfinace instiutions to ensure effective use of the microloans.

REASON 2: Kiva Ensures Reliable Entrepreneurs

Not only does Kiva utilize and partner with existing microfinance firms in economically viable communities, but Kiva also builds relationship with people with a passion for microfinancing as a cure for poverty. These people are call “Kiva fellows”. Kiva fellows work to…

• Facilitate Connections between Kiva’s Borrowers and Lenders
• Assist Communications and Maximize the host Microfinancing Institute’s Partnership with Kiva
• Support Kiva’s Mission and Procedures Through Actively Participating in the Kiva Community

The primary role of a Kiva Fellow is to to find and support reliable, viable, and motivated entrepreneurs in areas of poverty in need of microfinancing.

REASON 3: Kiva Makes Microfinancing Interactive and Potentially Profitable

Another specific and important role of the Kiva Fellows are to  update the Kiva Blog on the progress of the work Kiva is doing and promote of how the microfinancing institutions are using the lenders money. The information and relationship Kiva Fellows develop with the businesses using the microloans makes possible the niche of Kiva.org to allow lenders to follow the progress of the borrowers they are supporting. By promoting healthy and transparent interaction between lenders and entrepreneurs Kiva is able to bost an average return on investment of 5.5% which is typical of normal banking.

KIVA’S SUCCESS

Kiva has successfully and conveniently made possible microfinancing on a large scale and relational level through the internet. This has allowed microfinancing to make a large and growing impact in the fight aginast poverty. Microfinancing works by allowing low-income communities to grow in economic welfare and enterprise stability. It also helps gender equality by economically empowering women.

Kiva and microfinancing is not the sole solution to world poverty, but it is an important and powerful tool in making a large impact in the battle against world poverty. I haven’t yet, but am looking forward to supporting Kiva’s cause by participating as a lender. You should too.