Kiva Controversy Update

Kiva.org founder Matt Flannery, via Joi

Yesterday I added my two cents to an ongoing conversation about whether Kiva is being deceptive in how its marketing, whether it matters even if they are, and more broadly the state of relationships between donors, service providers and local populations.

Since then, there have been some good additional posts from very smart people:

The Acumen Fund's Sasha Dichter defends Kiva in a post titled "Kiva Customers Don't Receive the Loans You Give." His point is that the deception in the marketing isn't about the people not benefiting as you think they do; its your direct role in providing resources for a very specific person. In his estimation, its a sin of omission that many nonprofits commit.

Saundra on the Good Intentions Are Not Enough Blog is having none of it, slamming back with a fierce post titled "Deceptive Advertising Hurts the Entire Aid Industry." Her argument is that "person-to-person" donations are an illusion, and continuing to perpetrate the myth builds donor expectations for something that just isn't plausible, hurting the whole field.

Sean Stannard-Stockton, the best source of information about this, posted an example of a group - DonorsChoose.org, where the money really does go to the exact project you fund. Importantly, he shares a comment from a former employee of Donors Choose that makes it clear just what the trade-offs with this model can be. He also wrote a great post about how Twitter's placement of a number of social entrepreneurs as suggested users has impacted the conversation.

I think it's an important debate with implications about how we think about the relationships between different actors within the philanthropic equation, but I also want to state unequivocally that Kiva still has created a pipeline for a vast amount of resources to support very worthy micro-entrepreneurs, and that should be lauded.