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.
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 an internship with them. They post all of their internship opportunities on their Volunteer Opportunities page, which makes sense because the positions are unpaid. They offer internships in Business Analytics, Customer Service, Graphic Design, Information Technology, and Translation and Editing. Beyond that, they also have a Kiva Fellows Program. All of the opportunities are based in San Francisco, and I’m sure that there will be a lot of competition for the internships, so check out the individual position descriptions and apply as soon as you can.
Links to Help You Begin Your Research
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Tags: analyst, analytics, bilingual, California, customer service, design, fellowship programs, information technology, Internships, microfinance, non-profit, unpaid
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