Kiva: a huge contribution with minimal sacrifice

This past summer, my fraternity decided to take a percentage of money left over in our account and transfer it to Kiva, a site that partners with microfinancing institutions around the world. Our treasurer spent a considerable amount of time researching where to loan our money and at the end of the summer we had all of our money returned to us.

Our experience was not unusual. Kiva’s interest-free loans made microfinance institutions give people in poorer regions of the world that lack traditional banking systems opportunities to create business. These loans are fully paid back over 98% of the time. So contributors have the opportunity to help people and typically receive all of their money back.

From a Christian perspective, does a Kiva contribution qualify as giving as Christians are commanded? Economically, helping through Kiva is definitely a sacrifice. Besides the small risk of not receiving your money back, every Kiva contributor sacrifices the amount they could have earned had they placed their Kiva money in a mutual fund or savings account instead.

So Kiva is definitely a sacrifice, albeit often only a small sacrifice. And Kiva is perfect for people who have future needed money sitting untouched in an account for a period of time, which was the situation my fraternity was in. But the amount actually lost is only the interest rates sacrificed by not using the money elsewhere. I look at the story of the widow with only two coins to give and believe that Christians are called to a much larger sacrifice. I believe that Kiva is an amazing organization, I just encourage Christians to not limit themselves to the security that Kiva provides in their giving.