Kiva Wisconsin

About

Established in 2005 as the world’s first personal micro-lending website, Kiva enables everyday people to pool lending contributions as little as $25 to provide financial access to entrepreneurs in developing communities across the globe. Since its beginning, serving loans to a handful of fishmongers in eastern Uganda, Kiva has grown to enable over 1.7M lenders worldwide to lend a combined $1.2B to more than 2.6M entrepreneurs in 89 countries around the world. Kiva has been able to reach this global scale while still maintaining a 97% repayment rate. Kiva’s success has garnered worldwide recognition and accolades. In 2008, Kiva was named a TIME magazine Top 50 website. In 2011, The Economist honored Kiva with their Innovation Award. 

After the success of the international model, Kiva recognized the need to tackle financial exclusion by supporting local entrepreneurs in the U.S. and started the Kiva U.S. program in 2011, originally named “Kiva Zip”. Entrepreneurs apply directly to Kiva’s U.S. site to fundraise on the platform and are connected to millions of Kiva lenders. It also enables local lenders to make direct loans, as little as $25 to entrepreneurs in their neighborhoods. Since its beginning, Kiva U.S. has facilitated the crowdfunding of $29 Million from 230,000 Lenders to 5,500 Borrowers.