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Kiva
Loans that change lives
Kiva is an international nonprofit organisation, founded in 2005 and based in San Francisco, with a mission to connect people through lending to alleviate poverty. We celebrate and support people looking to create a better future for themselves, their families and their communities.
By lending as little as $25 on Kiva, anyone can help a borrower start or grow a business, go to school, access clean energy or realize their potential. For some, it’s a matter of survival, for others it’s the fuel for a life-long ambition.
100% of every dollar you lend on Kiva goes to funding loans. Kiva covers costs primarily through optional donations, as well as through support from grants and sponsors.
- 3 million borrowers
- 1.8 million lenders
- $1.2 billion loans funded
- 96.9% repayments
- 81 countries
Kiva started as a pioneer in crowdfunding in 2005, and is constantly innovating to meet people’s diverse lending needs. Whether it’s reinventing microfinance with more flexible terms, supporting community-wide projects or lowering costs to borrowers, we are always testing and learning.
Whether you lend to friends in your community, or people halfway around the world (and for many, it’s both), Kiva creates the opportunity to play a special part in someone else’s story. At Kiva, loans aren’t just about money—they’re a way to create connection and relationships.
When a Kiva loan enables someone to grow a business and create opportunity for themselves, it creates opportunities for others as well. That ripple effect can shape the future for a family or an entire community.
In 2005, Jessica Jackley and cofounder Matt Flannery had started San Francisco-based Kiva because during a three-month work assignment in East Africa, Jackley had met Ugandan entrepreneurs and wanted to share their inspirational stories with friends and family. Soon thereafter, Flannery and Jackley launched Kiva, the world’s first person-to-person micro-lending website, with a mission to “connect people through lending for poverty alleviation.”
Jackley is the kind of person who makes you feel at home right away, like she is truly happy to meet you, which is why I wasn’t surprised when she said, “Kiva started out of relationships and love, ideally I would love for that to be present in every single transaction that happens. People connecting.”
Throughout Kiva’s founding and history, Jackley, the spirit behind the organization, and Flannery, the CEO, stayed true to their original mission of connecting people and providing entrepreneurs with dignity and respect. A desire to tell the authentic stories of these entrepreneurs inspired Kiva’s founding, and this spirit of storytelling pervaded the entire organization, whether through the founder’s story, lender stories, entrepreneur stories, or fellow stories.