Kiva Plays Loose With the Facts
Kiva.org has been one of my favorite social enterprises even since I started lending small amounts of money to poor entrepreneurs in developing nations a couple of years ago. To me, what was so compelling about it was you could read little stories about entrepreneurs then choose the one you want to back. At least that's what Kiva said was happening. Turns out, that was a fiction--in most cases. Instead, Kiva channels money to micro-finance organizations that have already made the loans. I read about this outrage today in a story in the New York Times. The person who exposed the fiction, David Roodman, laid out his findings in a blog posting. A more charitable person might forgive Kiva.org for misrepresenting how its model works. But not me. Social enterprises should be held to an even higher standard than are for-profit businesses--not a lower one.