The world of non-profits is built on fundraising. Organizations big and small take money from donors and put it to use how they see fit. The system works, but it leaves a lot to be desired. What if you want to know where your money is going and whom it is helping? What if you want to decide where your money goes? You often can’t. With San Francisco based Kiva you can. You can loan money directly to the working poor. And if you make a wise investment and the person you loan money to succeeds, you’ll get your money back and get to loan it again. You can lend money to a man who runs a food market in Togo or a woman who sells traditional coats in Tajikistan. The choice is yours. Kiva is all about “connect[ing] people through lending for the sake of alleviating poverty.” It’s a really simple idea that couldn’t have taken hold before the Internet. Now it’s changing the way that we think about giving through microfinance and microfunding.

Good Things Come in Small Packages

I often talk about growing businesses here, but I don’t often use the same terminology for non-profits. Because of the way that charitable organizations work, they don’t often take off and blow up (in a good way) that tech startups do. I would say that Kiva is an exception. As of this morning, $68,700,035 in loans have been granted by 478,852 Kiva lenders in the form of 98,392 loans with a repayment rate of 98.17%. That’s all since 2005! If you want to see more stats from Kiva, you can check them out here. Right now, Kiva is the place to be in the non-profit world, which is why you should get excited about the potential of landing a job with them. Their Jobs page currently has 3 openings listed, and only one that is geared towards new grads – Software Engineer. If you have the necessary skills, then you can apply to jobs@kiva.org with a cover letter and resume. If you’re not a Software Developer, then you should probably keep your eyes peeled to see when they post a job that fits you well. There’s a lot of competition for their jobs, and they don’t seem all that interested in hearing from cold callers (but that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t try). When Kiva does post some new jobs (and they will because they appear to be growing quickly), you want to be able to jump on them as quickly as you can.

Links to Help You Begin Your Research

• Kiva.org
• Jobs at Kiva
• About Kiva
• Kiva’s Blog
• How Kiva Works
• Kiva’s Team
• Stats from Kiva

Have you lent money through Kiva?

We've identified Kiva as having career opportunities in the following categories:

• all employers
• California
• microfinance
• non-profit
• software development

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