Kiva at Four (Innovations Case Narrative: Kiva)

Person Microfinance,” published by the author in Innovations (Winter/Spring 2007). Started by the author, Jessica Jackley Flannery and Moses Onyango in 2005, Kiva is an online lending platform that allows individuals in the developed world to lend to small businesspeople in the developing world. Kiva operates in the microfinance space and works with a growing network of microfinance institutions (MFIs) in more than 40 countries. In the original case, Matt Flannery looked back on the seeds of Kiva’s extraordinary success over a mere two years. He also looked ahead at some of the challenges facing microfinance at that time and explored the risks and opportunities associated with Kiva’s continued growth. In this second installment of the Kiva story, he describes some of the pitfalls that materialized and how Kiva dealt with them. He also takes another look ahead, now from the perspective of a changed organization operating in a different financial climate.