KIVA LENDING TEAM

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A loan, not a donation.

Click here for details about our Kiva Lending Team activities. Kiva Microfunds is an online lending platform that offers an innovative approach to raising small business capital. As its founders remind us, where opportunity is not universal, “we envision a world where all people hold the power to create opportunity for themselves and others.”

Kiva first approves its small-scale (up to $10K) direct loan applications through “social underwriting,” where friends and family each lend $25 or more toward the loan request to determine the borrower’s trustworthiness. Only then is the loan is posted for public support. It’s an innovation in social entrepreneurship over the conventional barrier-ridden and faceless lending marketplace. Scott’s persuasive cooler project at Fox Farm was funded through a Kiva Zip loan, and a local networking campaign.

Now the Riverside Food Co-op has a Kiva Lending Team to create a more effective bloc of individual micro-loans toward a project of common interest to its group members. In this way we can deploy social power to help build small businesses. The group may concentrate on strictly local applications. Perhaps the borrower is a new farmer with a specific need, or is a potential RFC vendor. We grow together.

Furthermore at the Fourth Annual Members Meeting on July 8, 2017, the membership voted that the Lending Team become a Kiva Trustee. This means while our team has no financial liability for loans, our reputation is tied to the repayment rate of the borrowers we endorse. Where we believe an endorsement can effect economic vitality, we lead.

To be a part of it, go to Kiva.org and sign up. Then join the Riverside Food Co-op Lending Team. As a group member you may suggest a loan, or connect with your fellow group members to decide on the criteria for group support.

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Team Member Allison:
"I loan because I love helping people achieve their dreams to begin with but especially while working on my own…"

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