So it’s time to start coming up with candidates. I found one site that I think is really cool, although I haven’t done any major investigating. The name of the site is kiva.org and it’s focus is microlending. Most of you probably know what this is, but it’s basically giving very small interest free loans to extremely poor people who are looking to start a business so they can provide for themselves and their family. Sometimes it takes a very small amount of funding to start the business in question, and the large majority of the time you will get your loan repaid in full.
I urge you to check the site out and give me your thoughts, but let me share some positives real quickly:
1. Supposedly they send you some kind of updates when the business is up and running, which of course helps those who want to feel a personal connection to those they donate to.
2. While in reality it’s a donation, given that you are going to get the money back, you can continuously use it for new prospective entrepenuers. So how it would work is let’s say for example one donated $500. One idea would be to spread $25 to 20 different people, or perhaps $50 to 10 different people. Then you sit back and wait, and once you are paid back, you take the money you are repaid and give it to someone else, and simply repeat this process forever.
So right now I like this idea, but obviously there are so many charities out there and I’d love to hear comments from everyone else. If you leave a comment with a description of a charity, I may make it into a regular post so that it gains more visibility.
Of course given that almost no one knows my new website exists yet, there probably isn’t much comment traffic yet, but hopefully after we do this for 1-2 months, people will get the word out.
When I see the amount of time and effort given to help people in need it makes me a bit ashamed and embarrased of myself for not doing more. I applaud your efforts and expect your philanthropy will most certainly rub off on myself and others.
After a few moments on their website, I find Kiva to be an interesting organization. The idea of donations actually being loans to those that are trying to help themselves is wonderful.
gregshahade.com is now bookmarked. I will check back in the near future to see what’s been decided.
I really like this idea. Would happily contribute something to this and similar.
Kiva is indeed a worthy organization. They’re not the only one, certainly, but they would make a fine start to this program.