Kiva Banks $5 Million in New Funding from Omidyar

The Omidyar Network has just announced $5m in new funding for microlending site Kiva. The money will be distributed over the next three years, and will help Kiva grow its already impressive organization.

Kiva has a pretty unique place in the social entrepreneurship space. Its model of peer-to-peer loans for microventures around the world put the idea of business for good in from of many people for the first time. Its success -- more than $150 million in loans made through Kiva -- seems to validate the potential for big ideas to grow into disruptive organizations in just a few years. For those who think that online giving is the next big thing, it suggests that the connective power of the internet does, in fact, open up the possibility of fundamentally different giving relationships.

Indeed, it has been so influential and such an aspirational model that many young social enterprises have tried, unsuccessfully, to adapt pieces of its model to become the "Kiva for (insert something here)." Kiva, meanwhile, has had the difficult task of transitioning from media darling to a company sustainable outside the buzz of hum of accolades and even under the pressure of criticism.

This funding from Omidyar is at least one testament to their success in that process. $2 million will be used to match loans in the first two years, and the rest will be distributed over three years to help Kiva improve its technology, expand microfinance partners, and improve quality vetting mechanisms.

This is a good thing for the field. As much as I write about the challenge of seed funding, organizations that have achieved success also face the problem of being able to find money to improve and scale their work. The goal is a complete, healthy funding food chain.

Read more about the announcement here.

Photo credit: Rachel Strohm