[HN Gopher] What happened to the microfinance company Kiva?
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What happened to the microfinance company Kiva?
Author : impish9208
Score : 43 points
Date : 2023-08-14 10:01 UTC (13 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.technologyreview.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.technologyreview.com)
| bwb wrote:
| Holy crap that is a huge CEO salary for a non profit
| krsrhe wrote:
| Nonprofit just means no shareholders. Direct employees and
| vendors can still get rich. In Kiva's case, the local partner
| banks do really well.
| satvikpendem wrote:
| FYI you are shadowbanned and have been for quite some time,
| it seems. All of your comments show up "dead."
|
| Edit: why the downvotes? Are we not supposed to tell an
| account it's been shadowbanned?
| viraptor wrote:
| They may not be shadowbanned. Many of those comments are
| just low quality and likely downvoted.
| satvikpendem wrote:
| Every single one seems to be dead:
| https://i.imgur.com/ev5jvEt.png
|
| I'm not sure why some of those comments would have been
| flagged normally, they don't seem to break any HN rules
| at all. Given the fact that they're all dead, I was
| leaning towards being shadowbanned.
| viraptor wrote:
| Check further pages - some are up. They're not flagged -
| that would show up differently then just dead. They're
| just likely to be downvoted, because they're mostly low
| quality.
| j_crick wrote:
| Campaigning is real vOv
| JohnFen wrote:
| > All of your comments show up "dead."
|
| Not for me, they don't.
| satvikpendem wrote:
| Do you have showdead on in your HN profile settings? This
| is what it looks like for me:
| https://i.imgur.com/ev5jvEt.png
| boeingUH60 wrote:
| That doesn't even register on the grand scheme;
| https://nonprofitlight.com/
|
| Example; Roger Goodell - National Football League - $30.3
| million.
| cameldrv wrote:
| Gotta hand it to the #2, Holly Lang, adoption director of the
| Minnesota Companion Rabbit society for her $24 million salary
| though.
| boeingUH60 wrote:
| That's actually a glitch...her salary was $24,694, and
| ProPublica 's website somehow picked that up as
| $24,694,000, which that website cited.
|
| https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/20
| 1...
| tonymillion wrote:
| Thanks for clarifying, I looked at the site from GP and I
| WTF'ed loud enough to wake my dog.
| bhouston wrote:
| NFL is not the same type of charity though as Kiva. The NFL
| doesn't actually aim to help people.
| boeingUH60 wrote:
| Many hospitals and public/private colleges on that list
| though.
| ROTMetro wrote:
| Why does the current incarnation of Silicon Valley have to always
| be shady? Why can't it say 'our service is X' and then deliver
| service X, not some who knows what other agenda? A car parts
| store just sells car parts, they don't change and offer
| refrigerator parts since they already have a distribution system
| for parts and then tell their customers 'we have to do this in
| order to keep selling car parts'. Also, 'we are shifting our
| required by law in store oil recycling to 'contractors' and if
| they happen to just be dumping it into the river not our problem,
| wasn't us, we tried' (narrator: they didn't try).
|
| Silicon Valley deserves the hate and bad reputation they now
| have. They've acted in bad faith for too long while fostering an
| air of 'trying to make the world better'. I'm so glad they've
| lost their sales tax exemption and I hope they get kneecapped on
| every other 'advantage' they have (i.e. 'we don't have employees,
| we are empowering independent contractors who happen to look just
| like employees').
|
| America had so much optimism for tech and now they hate it, maybe
| reflect for a bit on why.
| antisthenes wrote:
| Information asymmetry is how capital extracts maximum possible
| value from the consumer in whatever fields they can get their
| grubby hands on.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| Guess Cory Doctorow's thesis continues to apply for all sorts of
| websites.
| bhouston wrote:
| Well, it looks like Kiva got taken over by leadership who are
| aiming to maximize the return to themselves rather than driving
| the original vision. As a Kiva donor for about a decade, it is
| probably time to move on. Oh well, it was good while it lasted.
| aaron695 wrote:
| [dead]
| wwtdtgotiatl wrote:
| Utterly bewildering statement by the VP Guis in here:
|
| > she found it odd that an American would be offered 0% interest
| while borrowers in poorer parts of the world were being charged
| up to 70%, according to the estimates posted on Kiva's website.
| "I don't see why poor people in Guatemala should basically be
| subsidizing relatively rich people here in Minnesota," she told
| me. Guis disagreed, telling me, "I take issue with the idea that
| systematically marginalized communities in the US are less
| deserving." She said that in 2022, nearly 80% of the businesses
| that received US loans were "owned by Black, Indigenous, and
| people of color."
|
| Do Black Americans really put themselves on par with Guatemalan
| subsistence farmers?
|
| Seems like such an egregious thing to say. Not trying to handwave
| away real issues but these two groups couldn't be further apart.
| krsrhe wrote:
| [dead]
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| Is it the case that black Americans are putting themselves on
| par with Guatemalan subsistence farmers, or that the VP is
| doing so?
| scarmig wrote:
| It's just corporate wokewashing. Make a profit-oriented
| decision, then offer a post-hoc rationalization of why it's
| good for racial minorities and hope to get some good press out
| of it. Nothing new or surprising here. Guis, it bears pointing
| out, is a white woman, not Black, and it's silly to attribute
| her shoddy ideas to Black people en masse.
| push-to-prod wrote:
| Greed happened, by the sound of it.
| xunil2ycom wrote:
| "he individual Kiva lenders earn no interest;" That's why I never
| bothered with Kiva. You want my money but you're not going to
| give me even a small cut? No thank you.
| akudha wrote:
| Not everything in life needs to make a profit. Kiva is not an
| investment instrument for making profits, it is to help people
| who are less fortunate than us.
|
| I am now out of touch with Kiva (though I still make loans) but
| I have been to many of their events, met some of the employees,
| met some terrific lenders who are genuinely passionate about
| helping people. I am disappointed how Kiva has turned out these
| days, but they were doing good work. Their lender community is
| insanely passionate. There are lenders who are worth 8/9
| figures and then there are people who can only spare 50$ a
| month and everyone in between. If you don't trust me, just go
| read their teams messages.
|
| So yeah, if you are looking to make a quick profit, Kiva (and
| Kiva like orgs) is not for you
| nocoiner wrote:
| I agree that many things should not be subject to the profit
| motive. But I'm going to put my capital at risk for no return
| - in the best case scenario - while the CEO of a middleman
| takes home $850k? No thanks.
| mytydev wrote:
| I was ok with this aspect of lending via Kiva. Finding out
| someone else was making a profit off the interest of a loan
| that I funded is the hard pill to swallow.
| solardev wrote:
| I think of it as a less expensive gofundme. It's not really
| about (or at least shouldn't be about) getting rich but giving
| others am opportunity they might never had had otherwise
| because of the circumstances of their birth.
| fred_is_fred wrote:
| Some interesting dark patterns here when I tried to pull my money
| after reading this. I had $30 or so.
|
| 1. Login, start withdrawal process. Get sent email verification
| link.
|
| 2. Click link, continue. Select which PayPal account to send to.
|
| 3. Site logs me out.
|
| 4. Log in again. Continue process. Get a 2nd verification email.
| It notes that Withdrawals are manual from the accounting team and
| take 1-2 weeks.
|
| 5. Click 2nd verification email. Dropped back into account with
| no confirmation.
|
| 6. Withdrawal information arrives.
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