As one who enjoys donating to organizations that can stretch a dollar (not those who give your cash to the CEO), I found Kiva.org to be pretty cool. I’ve made frequent donations to Heifer International before, as they use your money to buy livestock for poor villages on the stipulation that some of the offspring be donated to other poor villages. Kiva.org is a micro-financing option that allows you to choose an entrepreneur in the third world and ‘invest’ money from $25 on up in that entrepreneur. This system is something akin to the system used by Prosper, except you will not earn interest on loans given via Kiva. Instead, your money will be repaid within a predetermined amount of time, at which point you can re-invest in another entrepreneur or cash out.
What this does is allows you to give money to someone in need around the world so they can grow their business, feed their family, and help their local economy, and then get your investment back to re-invest in another. Imagine, one $100 donation being used over and over again to help entrepreneurs worldwide.
Not only that, but their repay ratio is pretty good, reported at 99% but realistically probably more around 90-95%. With odds like that, it’s a pretty good chance your money will be returned to you, and even if it is not you have made a kind donation.
If you’re looking for a good use for your up-and-coming tax rebate check, you might want to consider giving back, and then getting back again, via Kiva!
Comment by Allen Taylor — February 16, 2008 @ 6:23 pm
I found your site on technorati and read a few of your other posts. Keep up the good work. I just added your RSS feed to my Google News Reader. Looking forward to reading more from you.
Allen Taylor