Yesterday I signed up for Kiva and tried to lend some money through the site. It's an excellent concept and extremely well executed - but they need to make a simpler, low-maintenance experience possible as well as the fully information-immersed one.
What I would like: I'd love a simplified option available for those who want to lend, but don't have the time or interest to go deeply into the details. Some people will want to - and that's fine - but others (and I suspect many of the people with lots of money to lend) will not. It should be possible to specify some broad characteristics of your desired portfolio (25% in Europe, 50% in Africa, 25% in Asia, for instance - all through partners with a rating of 3 or more stars) - and have the system fill this portfolio to the desired amount for you.
Also - automate this: Make it possible to save a set amount every month, used to increase the portfolio specified. Let me set a default of "re-lend funds as they become available" and specify trigger points for informing me about events (e.g., if default rate slips above xx, if the value in my local currency falls more than xx% through loan defaults or currency events).
I'm not saying this "low maintenance after initial setup" thing is easy to execute or make user-friendly and simple - but I think it is crucial to keep people lending over time as the initial curiosity and interest fade. Some will want to keep knowing the details - others just want to do good and once in a while see what they've accomplished at more aggregate levels.
Another idea in line with their user-involvement philosophy: Let the most interested users define portfolios with certain characteristics. Allow others to fund these portfolios - allow the portfoliomakers to create pages on Kiva promoting and explaining their portfolios and the reasoning behind them - and let them track the funds attracted and impact of their own portfolios. If it is possible to do this in a simple way - add user ratings of the portfolios and popularity/success KPIs. That way you can go to a portfolio page and choose ("Create your own," "see most popular" "see most successful" etc.).
What motivates this issue: Kiva strives to be a highly transparent website - and it is. The statistics and information provided are stunning. Not only do you know exactly which individual you are lending to (all funds for the operation of Kiva itself are solicited separately on a purely voluntary basis), and exactly which microfinance intermediary is linking you (with info and links to homepages etc.) - but you can see past borrowing history of the individual, aggregate statistics for the microfinance institution. To be a bit more systematic, you will find info about
I'm not saying this is a major problem - but I actually ended up lending about $125 less than I was planning to. Why? Because finding and actually executing the loans took too long: Each loan has to be made separately and individually through a series of clicks. Everytime I wanted to make a loan I needed to go to a list of projects, click on one project, decide how much to give, go back to the list, click on another project, and so on. Sometimes the "lend" button limited me to $25 per project (to ensure that everyone would find projects to fund). Quite often the projects were filled by the time they loaded (even though they were on the "in need" list).
Granted, I browsed the "most popular" category of projects - but the site recommends that I start out lending to four- or five-star microfinance partners. These are the ones with a well-established track record, but when I tried going to the list of high-ranked partners and looking at their "in need" projects, these lists were mostly empty. Presumably because they are the most popular institutions. The practical way of finding them was therefore to look in the "most popular" category.
What I would like: I'd love a simplified option available for those who want to lend, but don't have the time or interest to go deeply into the details. Some people will want to - and that's fine - but others (and I suspect many of the people with lots of money to lend) will not. It should be possible to specify some broad characteristics of your desired portfolio (25% in Europe, 50% in Africa, 25% in Asia, for instance - all through partners with a rating of 3 or more stars) - and have the system fill this portfolio to the desired amount for you.
Also - automate this: Make it possible to save a set amount every month, used to increase the portfolio specified. Let me set a default of "re-lend funds as they become available" and specify trigger points for informing me about events (e.g., if default rate slips above xx, if the value in my local currency falls more than xx% through loan defaults or currency events).
I'm not saying this "low maintenance after initial setup" thing is easy to execute or make user-friendly and simple - but I think it is crucial to keep people lending over time as the initial curiosity and interest fade. Some will want to keep knowing the details - others just want to do good and once in a while see what they've accomplished at more aggregate levels.
Another idea in line with their user-involvement philosophy: Let the most interested users define portfolios with certain characteristics. Allow others to fund these portfolios - allow the portfoliomakers to create pages on Kiva promoting and explaining their portfolios and the reasoning behind them - and let them track the funds attracted and impact of their own portfolios. If it is possible to do this in a simple way - add user ratings of the portfolios and popularity/success KPIs. That way you can go to a portfolio page and choose ("Create your own," "see most popular" "see most successful" etc.).
What motivates this issue: Kiva strives to be a highly transparent website - and it is. The statistics and information provided are stunning. Not only do you know exactly which individual you are lending to (all funds for the operation of Kiva itself are solicited separately on a purely voluntary basis), and exactly which microfinance intermediary is linking you (with info and links to homepages etc.) - but you can see past borrowing history of the individual, aggregate statistics for the microfinance institution. To be a bit more systematic, you will find info about
- all of Kiva (total number of lenders, borrowers, funds raised, averages per lender on various dimensions, etc.)
- microfinance partners (months associated with Kiva, loans distributed, default rates etc.)
- countries (underneath each specific project is a series of aggregate social and other measures for that country)
- lenders (each lender has a profile page (anonymous if you wish) with statistics about your lending activities (distribution over geographies, gender, sector, default rates etc.)
- borrowers
- your own portfolio
- your own non-lending activities (for instance, how many friends you have invited, how many of them accepted, how many loans and what aggregate sums these have made available)
I'm not saying this is a major problem - but I actually ended up lending about $125 less than I was planning to. Why? Because finding and actually executing the loans took too long: Each loan has to be made separately and individually through a series of clicks. Everytime I wanted to make a loan I needed to go to a list of projects, click on one project, decide how much to give, go back to the list, click on another project, and so on. Sometimes the "lend" button limited me to $25 per project (to ensure that everyone would find projects to fund). Quite often the projects were filled by the time they loaded (even though they were on the "in need" list).
Granted, I browsed the "most popular" category of projects - but the site recommends that I start out lending to four- or five-star microfinance partners. These are the ones with a well-established track record, but when I tried going to the list of high-ranked partners and looking at their "in need" projects, these lists were mostly empty. Presumably because they are the most popular institutions. The practical way of finding them was therefore to look in the "most popular" category.
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1 kommentar:
this is premal, president of kiva. thank you for the great analysis. i will pass this on to our engineering team. best, premal
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