Let's micro Loan

What's the percent that goes towards running the overall agency? Do they have a 990?And I disagree that it is one of the best thing we can do for struggling nations, but that it is just one of many things we can do. The End of Poverty by Jeff Sachs explains a wide number of things that can help the developing world. But the key lesson from him is that we cannot assume a one size fits all, that we must tailor aid packages and programs to each nation to fit its needs. Shock therapy and debt forgiveness will not be the cure for Africa as it was for Poland.How does it deal with nations that lack the necessary infrastructure and law frameworks? Or does it simply not even try in those areas? Because without the necessary infrastructure to allow a market to function, a micro loan is rather pointless. Edited by obvious Child, : No reason given.

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None of the loan goes to Kiva.

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That isn't what I asked. I asked how much of the donation goes towards running Kiva. Non-profits for the most part require a certain percentage to operate. The rest goes towards the people and places they are trying to help. Some of these non-profits are better then others, such as Penny Arcade's Child's play which has a virtually unheard of 100%, and some non-profits largely exist to pay their CEOs.

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That is not a good enough reason to not try this.

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Agreed, however, it is a good reason to try other things first, particularly in Africa. As Modulous has cited, conditions may exist which would render Micro loans useless. Thus we should focus on a tailor made aid program to fix the conditions to allow micro loans to function.

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But remember, these are person to person transactions. Even in areas without the normal legal infrastructure it may be possible to make a micro loan. As with anything else, you start small and test the waters. If it succeeds you then make more such loans.

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That's not what I'm worried about. Without things like passable roads and safe markets, the problems of a weak legal system are pretty minor. If they cannot even make the basics of their business work due to fundamental flaws in their physical infrastructure, we shouldn't, as you stated, make a loan.

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I don't know how to make it any clearer. Zero percent of the money loaned goes to Kiva. Kiva is supported by donations specifically directed to supporting Kiva and unrelated to the loan streams.

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Do you have a tax form for that? It should be a 990.http://www.kivafriends.org/index.php/topic,562.0.htmlThat's all I can find but there's a error message when it opens.It appears I have massively overestimated the economics, political, business and legal knowledge of people here.

well it is a specialized forum. I should have known better.

It says "data error" on mine.Anyways I'm looking for one number, it should be allocation of funds or something like it, a percentage.

It is not my fault that you do not understand economics, geopolitics, and business. And if my points were 'bickering' you would have been able to defend your points. Yet you're abandoning them left and right. Edited by obvious Child, : No reason given.

Hmm.It should be under expenses if you have the full IRS 990. Actually if you can just list all of the expenses (lines 13-16) with total revenue I can figure it out.Here's a sample 990 from another charity:| Aloha United Way

what the hell...Total Revenues of 161,545.Program Services (loans) 100,880.Zero rest.Where the hell did the rest of the money go?

Oh. That makes sense now. Do you know how long Kiva has been in existence for?

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One key point is that ALL of the loaned money goes to the borrowers.

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And creationists say that the world is only 6,000 years old. Do we take that on face value? 501(c)s have had a long history of having problems like this. Therefore, those in the know look at their tax forms to see just how their claims of resource allocation hold up.

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All of this stuff about KIVA's revenues and expenses is simply a irrelevant.

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Have you heard of the various non-profit scandals?I realize this is a specialized forum, and the legal/accounting/business understanding is fundamentally lacking, but do not attack someone who is using that in a way to understand a subject, particularly when there is a history of non-profit scandals and when there is a easy way to see if they are full of crap or actually legit.Edited by obvious Child, : No reason given.

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But honestly it looks like the total revenue isn't enough to buy too many diamonds, much less a mine.

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That's irrelevant. I just don't want to donate money to a 501(c) that exists largely to make its CEO, or other officers rich

Hmmm. Then it will take a couple years to see how they treat that net asset line. Call me paranoid, but I understand nonprofits as well as accounting enough to be suspicious. But that's always a problem for new non-profits. Until they have a history of honesty and good resource allocation, it's a struggle.

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Then do your homework and decide where to donate. One point though, loans are not donations.

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*sigh*We are doing homework. Looking at a 990 IS homework.And just for your information, nonprofits take in donations, which are either marked for operations of the nonprofit or for the nonprofits's reason for existence, in this case loans. In this case, it appears that you make a donation to Kiva with a specific mark on the money to go to whoever you picked to get the loan. Then Kiva makes the micro-loan out of its donation fund. The money trail is relatively simple. You -> Kiva -> Kiva's donation fund -> Microloan beneficiary. What we're looking for is any shenanigans, such as the one I posted in the link where instead of the donation money going to microloans, it goes somewhere else, such as Kiva's operations funds or someone's wallet.