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Kiva is a nonprofit organization that facilitates micro-loans to enterprising individuals around the world so that they may earn their own way out of poverty. By making loans through the Kiva website, you can be part of the solution to poverty AND earn points and miles (because you can use your credit card to finance loans).
Two years ago, the Kiva Lending Team started up on Milepoint and quickly began breaking records left and right. Despite our relatively small size, we are ranked 2nd among all Kiva teams in terms of amount loaned!
You can help us celebrate our 2nd anniversary by joining the Milepoint team and making a loan on our anniversary date: Tuesday Feb 12. The team captains have pledged to match every loan up to $17,500 made on this day.
Since we have members all around the world, we will use a Milepoint Kiva Day – starting at midnight Feb 12th Samoa time; ending at Feb 12th 11:59 p.m. Hawaii time. Regardless of your time zone, make a loan on Feb 12th and the Milepoint Kiva Captains will match these loans up to $17,500 in new money.
If you’re interested in joining us, click here to join the Milepoint team on Kiva, and make a loan on Feb 12!
Related Posts
- How to maximize points and virtue through Kiva loans
- Join the alliance!
- Minimum spend requirements? Kivalens to the rescue
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To keep the Kiva support rolling, I’m giving $1 for each person who comments on this post: http://www.awardtravelforgood.com/2013/02/21/opening-deltas-kimono-how-to-maximize-skymiles/
How many comments can wordpress handle? Let’s find out…
@Joe: In the long run those microlenders don’t have any more capital to lend out next month unless Kiva lenders do capitalize the loans they have already pre-disbursed and are listing on Kiva. If they really thought they could create money out of thin air, they’d be hedge fund managers. It’s a little bit like the photographs of starving children in a traditional NGO appeal: your money doesn’t literally go to help that specific pictured child, even if the donation appeal includes the notion of sponsoring such a child, but if the organization efficiently spends a high percentage of donations toward mission (and what that percentage is depends heavily on the category of organization), then I’m satisfied.
Ah, wrong FrequentMiler. Can you send a message to The Miles Professor and I’ll respond. I can’t find you there! I just don’t know if I missed an email from you at themilesprofessor on gmail from yesterday’s correspondence about loans. Sorry for using your comments form as a communication medium!
Hi Frequent Miler,
I don’t have email access at work so sent you a private message on FlyerTalk about the loans. Please check!
The Miles Professor: The FlyerTalk mailman must be taking the day off — I don’t have any private messages…
So local middlemen collect (and keep?) all the interest??
What sort of rates are the borrowers charged?
Just so you know, you aren’t actually funding loans or giving money to the people you see on the Kiva website. Those people have most likely already received loans through local micro-lenders (“field partners”), often at very high interest rates. Kiva’s money backs those micro-lenders against defaults. Essentially, you are insuring those lenders by capitalizing Kiva.
http://blogs.cgdev.org/open_book/2009/10/kiva-is-not-quite-what-it-seems.php
If you’re just churning to get a credit card spend, it’s no big deal. Don’t think that you’re changing anyone’s life though. They would have received their loan anyway.
Kiva is upfront about how long it takes to send over from paypal. Its just part of the process that you have to factor in.
Tell Paypal to stop reversing the charges I try to make on Kiva, and I’ll come back. I know they cover the transaction fees, but it’s been six months of headaches and “you cannot use this card.” Bah.
Kiva is a great company doing great things for people all over the world, but it has been a real hassle to requesting the paypal payments back to me after the loans have been repaid. usually takes them 10-14 days to manually send the money to my paypal after the funds have been deposited in my kiva account. I probably wont be doing many loans after my current loans have been paid back. Much easier and quicker ways to do minimum spend.
What are the mark-ups and overhead amounts charged by Kiva as intermediary?
General question about kiva loans: how long does it take (on average) for a loan to be repaid, in your experience?
Ryan H: Different loans have different terms. I think the shortest pay back fully in 4 months, but there are others that go for a few years. Many start to pay along the way, but some simply pay in full at the end of the term. You can sort by Repayment Term within the Kiva interface or within Kivalens.org.
Tom / SitInFirst: I believe that Kiva passes along all of the loan to their field partners that actually service the loan. Think of the field partners as being like neighborhood small banks to those who get loans. The field partners collect interest from the borrowers in order to maintain their own operations, but the principal is returned to Kiva and then to the individual lender. In order to cover overhead, Kiva asks for a contribution with each loan. You can set the contribution to zero if you want to.
Hi Frequent Miler,
The wording is slightly vague. Is it every loan up to $17,500 (i.e. $17,500 per loan) or $17,500 total among all loans?
Great to hear this! Believe it or not, I was actually going to make some loans tonight and will wait until tomorrow instead!
The Miles Professor: We have $17,500 total ready to loan. So, we’ll add up the total $ loans made by Milepoint team members tomorrow and match up to a total of $17,500