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Background

• Beginnings
• Milestones
• Research

Matt and Jessica Flannery had only been married a few months when Jessica took a 3-month trip to East Africa to conduct impact evaluation surveys for Village Enterprise Fund. Jessica had heard Dr. Muhammad Yunus - founder of Grameen Bank and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to eradicate poverty - speak at Stanford University and felt compelled to pursue a career in microfinance. Meanwhile Matt, a Tivo engineer, was thinking of a new business idea every day in his quest to become a Silicon Valley entrepreneur.

For three months Jessica visited with entrepreneurs who had used small grants of $100 - $150 from Village Enterprise Fund to start a small business. Matt joined her for two weeks to film some of the interviews, and they heard time and time again of people who - with the help of those tiny loans from Village Enterprise Fund - had grown their businesses and gotten to a place where they could afford a better life. They heard stories of people who were able to sleep on mattresses instead of dirt floors, afford to take sugar in their tea daily and buy fresh fish for their families a few times every week. Rather than meeting the poor and helpless, they found themselves meeting successful entrepreneurs who had generated enough profits from their small businesses to create a real impact on their standard of living.

Over their three months came three realizations:

• We are more connected to the developing world than we realize. Even when he was in San Francisco and she in rural Africa seemingly worlds away, Matt could reach Jessica on her cell phone as though she were one block away. Distance means little in the world of communication today.


• The poor are very entrepreneurial. While the profit margins may be very different, the spirit of entrepreneurship is as strong among the poor of the developing world as it is in Silicon Valley.


• Stories connect people in a powerful way. As they listened to story after story of a fishmonger who needed enough money to buy directly from the fishermen at the lake, or a farmer who needed to buy a better breed of cow to produce more milk, Matt and Jessica knew that any of their friends back home would want to support these business ventures if they also heard their stories. With each story came a human connection as similarities were identified, making an African entrepreneur someone easier to relate to despite differences in language, culture or levels of wealth.

After witnessing the power of microfinance in improving the lives of the poor, they returned with one question in mind: "How can we lend to a rural African entrepreneur?"

It was easy to identify that there was no way to make a microloan to a specific entrepreneur in the developing world. It wasn't easy to figure out how to make it possible.

Thus began a year of phonecalls and meetings with microfinance experts, lawyers, economists, Internet experts, and anyone else who would listen to their idea of "sponsoring a business". After much questioning and a lot of skepticism they finally decided to just begin.

In March 2005, through a local contact in Uganda, 7 loans were posted on Kiva for a total of $3,500. They included a goat herder, a fish monger, a cattle farmer and a restauranteur. Six months later every loan had been repaid. These original 7 entrepreneurs became known as the "Dream Team" and proved it was possible to lend to the poor over the Internet.

In October 2005 Kiva announced to the world the first peer-to-peer microlending website via a press release. Shortly after the Daily Kos discovered Kiva and broadcast the website to hundreds of thousands of its readers. The word was out... and the rest is history.

Since its birth Kiva has grown from a small personal project to one of the world's largest microfinance facilitators, connecting entrepreneurs with millions of dollars in loans from tens of thousands of lenders around the world.



2005

March	The first 7 Kiva Loans are funded, for a total of $3,500. These original entrepreneurs become known as the "Dream Team".
September	Each member of the "Dream Team" fully repays their loan.
October	A blog about Kiva is featured on Daily Kos, and in a matter of hours all loans listed on Kiva are funded. Matt Flannery leaves his job at Tivo.

2006

January	Premal Shah leaves PayPal to become Kiva President.
February	Kiva launches its MFI (microfinance institution) partnership strategy and posts loans for funding from the first Kiva Field Partners.
July	CEO and Founder of Linked-In, Reid Hoffman, joins Kiva's Board of Directors.
September	Premal Shah, Kiva President, is a guest panelist at the Clinton Global Initiative in New York City.
October	Frontline/WORLD airs a documentary on Kiva, and the resulting traffic explosion promptly crashes the Kiva website for three days. Once the website is back online, over $250,000 is loaned in the week following.
November	Kiva Loans top $1 million and 20th Field Partner comes online.
December	Kiva Loans top $2 million and Kiva is featured in the New York Times Magazine "Year in Ideas".

2007

January	The first Kiva entrepreneur in Afghanistan is fully funded, through Field Partner Ariana Financial Services Group.
March	Nicholas Kristof, columnist for the New York Times and Kiva Lender, visits an entprepreneur he loaned to in Kabul, and writes about the experience. The article becomes the 3rd most emailed article of the day, and in three days over $250,000 is loaned.
April	Kiva Loans top $5 million, and the 50,000th user registers.
May	Kiva announces its 50th Field Partner, and the first Field Partner in Iraq, Al Aman Microfinance. The W.K. Kellogg Foundation awards Kiva a grant to fund the due diligence program.
June	Kiva Loans top $8 million, and the 75,000th user registers.
July	The Kiva headquarters moves to its current address at 3180 18th Street, San Francisco.
August	Matt Flannery participates in the 2007 Brookings Blum Roundtable. Kiva Loans top $10 million.
September	President Clinton's book "Giving" is released, which profiles Kiva as a way to give back. Kiva Co-Founders Matt and Jessica Flannery appear on The Oprah Winfrey Show with President Clinton. The 100,000 Kiva user registers. For the first time, the total funds being loaned through Kiva is greater than the total loan requests being received, and the Kiva site is temporarily "sold out" of loans for funding. Kiva is announced a winner of the World Summit Award 2007 for "e-Business", and The Tech Museum Awards 2007 Economic Development Award Laureate. Kiva president Premal Shah attends the Clinton Global Initiative in New York.
October	Kiva marks its 2 year anniversary. Matt Flannery is announced one of Smithsonian magazine's "37 Under 36: American Innovators in the Arts and Sciences."
December	Kiva sells a record $2.2 million in gift certificates during the month of December, over $250,000 of which were sold December 24.

2008

January	Kiva facilitates a record $2.8 million in loans to the developing world in one month.
February	The 250,000th user signs up. Kiva launches in Southern Sudan.
March	The $25 millionth dollar is loaned through Kiva. Kiva is awarded a three-year, $1,015,000 Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship from the Skoll Foundation. Leslie Crutchfield, managing director of the Ashoka Global Academy for Social Entrepreneurship and co-author of "Forces For Good: The Six Practices Of High-Impact Non Profits, joins Kiva as Board Member.
April	Advanta launches the KivaB4B Project, a partnership between Kiva.org and Advanta.
May	Kiva.org is awarded the Webby People's Choice Award for Charitable Organizations / Nonprofit.

"Kiva and the Birth of Person-to-Person Microfinance" is an article narrating the birth of Kiva and the growth which resulted in the organization as it stands today. Authored in February 2007 by Kiva Co-Founder and CEO, Matt Flannery, the article was published in Innovations, Winter/Spring 2007 by MIT Press.

United Nations Capital Development Fund: Basic Facts About Microfinance

The Consultative Group to Assist the Poor (CGAP): Key Principles of Microfinance