Kiva and the Managerial Effect

“Relend your $48.36” reads the subject line. I open the email, click the bright blue “Lend your $48.36 now” button, and land on the Kiva site. This time the landing page shows “Crisis Support Loans.” Help moringa farmers in rural Ghana make it through disruptions caused by COVID-19 or help supply electricity and sanitation to those in rural Kenya?

 

 

 

I’ve been a micro-loan participant on Kiva for the past 4 years. Initially I was extremely uncomfortable with the platform. I still am, though the discomfort has worn down through repetition. What does it mean for me, a White, male, heterosexual, cisgender, 30-something, able bodied, cogno-normative American—i.e. someone at the apex of privilege globally—to search through listings of those in need, deciding who to allocate my small amount of money to? It’s an incredibly icky feeling that seems to reassert that privilege. Like in the Dave Eggers novel You Shall Know Our Velocity, in which the protagonist (similar to me in terms of identity) receives a windfall and travels around the world to hand it out to people, an existential payment against the vagaries of his youth. He can’t get over the grossness of picking, somewhat at random, who to give life changing amounts of money to, but it’s important to him to be taking on that giving himself, directly, rather than through an organization.

 

Of course, the amount of money I can lend is not life changing, and it’s routed through different agencies: first Kiva and then the field organization coordinating the loan (aside from less frequent direct loans from Kiva). I spent hours deciding on the first couple of loans I made due to anxiety over choosing “correctly” so as to do the most good (however defined). At times I let the money sit in my account to avoid the stress and time commitment of choosing. If that isn’t lazy privilege, what is? (I must not have been the only doing this because Kiva recently instituted automatic lending if money sits in your account for an extended period.) Eventually I set a few criteria to streamline the lending process and to keep the money out there, in the hands of others. Now, here in a Gender & Development class, it seems like a good time to reevaluate those criteria in light of GAD readings (from Kabeer in particular). Below are my historical criteria followed by an assessment in terms of class material, along with where these screenings lead today.

 

1.     Lend only to women, preferably a collective
I’m still comfortable with this. The GAD perspective as explicated by McIlwaine & Datta shows us that men may need to be part of the development process too, but Kiva doesn’t screen for feminist loans. They do, however, screen for women. I hope that the collective model allows for more good to be done, with more safety for the loan. When I click on this today, I see 10,822 loans to choose from.

 

2.     Avoid defaults
Of course I want my money returned so that I can lend it again. This is the managerial perspective at work. What loans am I missing that might be more impactful by screening this way? Potentially many thousands. Which actually becomes another reason for this screen: safety and a means for further reducing the number to consider. Like a harried manager with little time, I choose the screening option that shows the safest options that reduce the potential loans by the most. This criteria does not sit well with me. Kiva buries these controls under a light grey Filters button, then under another light grey button labeled “Advanced Filters.” I set the default rate to 0% and am down to 450 loans.

 

3.     Avoid risk
As with defaults, I want to avoid risk. See above for my reservations about this criteria. Kiva has a risk meter based on their assessment of the field partner coordinating the loan. At the lowest setting, 0 loans are displayed. I adjust until loans repopulate on my screen: 98 possibilities.

 

4.     Don’t leak money
A final advanced filter concentrates on the profitability of the loan. Again, my reservations are noted above under 2. Avoid defaults. I don’t loan to make money (if that were my aim, there are clearly efficient ways), but I also don’t want to lose money so that I can’t relend. The profitability bar ranges from -30% to 45%. I set this to 0% and still see 98 loans. At 3% there are no loans. All 98 loans offer a potential 1% return.

 

5.     What I don’t consider: delinquency rate, average cost to borrower, direct vs. partner loan
I should consider cost to the borrower. My goal isn’t to enrich the field partner. Doing so would be just performing my own role in a top-down development scheme. I adjust the bar and find that the lowest cost to the borrower is 20%. The field partner will make ~19% on my loan. Presumably this is the same partner because the same 98 loans, all in Senegal, are represented. I have trouble stomaching such profiteering. I go back and increase risk until I have a new set of loans, then reduce cost of loan to borrower to 0. Better to increase the risk of my entire loan than to charge the borrower more. Of course, that means the Senagalese borrowers are all eliminated. Are they less deserving? Are my qualms about the field partner enough to mean these people shouldn’t be considered? I now see 32 loans, all in Nicaragua. Sometimes I deliberately search by region but these steps usually limit loans to my target area, the Global South. One time I did lend within the United States. It’s the only loan that I’ve ever had default.

 

6.     Sectors, Attributes, Tags
32 loans. This is the sifting step. This is where class readings should come more directly into play. Support the group that wants to buy more soda to sell for their shop? The member who wants to buy coffee, corn, and a pig? I look for loans that bespeak empowerment, not just contributing to ongoing capitalist normalcy. Loans connected to education, green projects, or art catch my eye. One loan is marked “Female education.” I check the box and view “Recuerdo Group’s story” about a young woman and mother who works as a cook on a farm, sells food on the weekends, and is in the third year of a business administration degree. She needs funds to buy ingredients to support her college expenses and, eventually, to maybe own a grocery store in the underdeveloped region of rural northwest Nicaragua. I click the blue Lend now button and checkout, taking care to uncheck the automatic $3.75 donation to Kiva each loan usually includes. A message on the final page:

 

James, thanks to you, 1 borrower is closer to their dreams!

 

Is this the “most effective” loan to choose? I have no idea and I’m starting to think that that question is a red herring. I do know that my decision was uncomfortably guided by the managerial perspective, even as I tried to incorporate GAD considerations into the decision making process. The better answer may be to cash out my Kiva money that lets me enjoy a bullshit Global North sense of informed control, judiciousness, and agency, and to instead donate it directly to an experimental development group that doesn’t seek to repay me. What little money I can give I want to be in the right GAD hands, and I’m not sure Kiva is able to do that. Any suggestions for what to do with this $25 once it comes back to me in 16 months?