Dear Friends and Family,
I'd like to welcome our newest supporter Mohammad Iftikhar. Moe is the CEO of Creative Exit, LLC, a web development & marketing company with over 18 years of experience in web design, advertisement, marketing, graphics & printing. Moe was referred by Paul Tran - thank you Paul for continually helping us connect with new supporters. Moe, welcome to the team! Thank you to everyone who already welcomed Moe on LinkedIn.
Donation Lending is Spreading
We launched more than a year ago with a new vision for microfinance and the undue burdens we place on the shoulders of the poor. I hoped it would catch on with other microfinance organizations and it is. Zidisha, a small, but prominent microfinance organization, has now launched their own pay it forward program. They operate differently than we do, but I'm pleased that other organizations are starting to see value in our vision and that donation lending is taking root. In the future, when Kiva decides to follow our example too, then we will have truly shaken up an industry that is overdue for correction. Let's see what happens...
Other Updates
We are now lending with Care. Care is nearly identical to Kiva with many of the same for-profit field partners. While we wait for our own field advisors to ramp up and grow our donation lending program, we will continue to work with Kiva and now Care too. With Kiva and Care, we lend small amounts crowdfunded with many others. Our activities with Kiva and Care are linked on our website and summarized on our Impact Tracker.
We've refreshed our website with some minor updates. We try to keep our content clear and minimal so that it may be easily translated into other languages with Google or a Chrome browser. We've activated official accounts on Instagram (@donationlending) and Facebook. Thank you Paul for pushing this. Per David's request, we may add a Spanish language site(s) soon. Still working on this.
Featured Entrepreneur
Meet Michell from Ecuador. She's a young entrepreneur who is only 19 years old and lives with her parents in the cantón of San Lorenzo, province of Esmeraldas. From a young age, Estefanía has worked selling fish, shellfish, and seafood in her city. This activity has permitted her to obtain necessary resources to get her family ahead, and above all, to help her parents with household expenses. We helped her buy refrigerators to keep the seafood fresh, to be able to offer her clients products in good condition.
Since 2013, we have supported 344 (up from 330 in June) entrepreneurs in 37 countries. Our average loan size is $1391 with a term of 18 months. Of the 344 loans we have given, 191 have been paid back completely. Our lending default rate is an incredibly low 0.50%. Women, who are traditionally excluded from financial services at a higher rate than men, account for 83% of our lending portfolio. Our total lending impact (including crowdfunding with others) is $478,546. Borrower repayments have funded 62% of our loans. In the last 30 days, we have received $173.44 in repayments. Our current cash balance available for lending is $2,920.82. We receive $533 in monthly donations. Additional details are available on our updated Impact Tracker, a public Google Sheet.
Thank you for your support, volunteering, sharing our message, encouragement, and generosity.
Sincerely,
Bryan
Founder
Benjamin 1784