Put your money to work

moultano

<div class="IPBDescription">Kiva.org</div>I just happened upon <a href="http://kiva.org/" target="_blank">kiva.org</a> this evening, and it seems like an amazing idea for a charity. The site allows you to finance small entrepreneurial ventures in developing countries through small loans that are often subeconomic for banks to take on at reasonable interest rates. This is a significant market failure because transactional costs inhibit the natural flow of money towards opportunity. At the cost of nothing more than the lost interest, and a little risk, you can help someone substantially improve their life.

If you have any extra cash that you aren't immediately going to spend, and won't miss the interest on, this seems like a great thing to do with it.

Tyrain

Just lend some poor guys about 125$.

Quaunaut

Hell of an idea. Child's Play may be getting a smaller donation this year.

TychoCelchuuu

<!--quoteo(post=1611173:date=Mar 4 2007, 01:40 AM:name=moultano)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(moultano @ Mar 4 2007, 01:40 AM) [snapback]1611173[/snapback]</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->
I just happened upon <a href="http://kiva.org/" target="_blank">kiva.org</a> this evening, and it seems like an amazing idea for a charity.
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It's not a charity if you're loaning people money. It would only be charity if you didn't expect to get paid back, which means it was a bad loan in the first place and their business ends up failing and nobody ended up better off.

GreyFlcn

<strike>Well either way I doubt you'd get any money back <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/tounge.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":p" border="0" alt="tounge.gif" /></strike>
Huh, looks like you do with Kiva

However if you wanted to do micro credit donations

Might I also suggest the <a href="https://secure.ga4.org/01/grameen_foundation?qp_source=get_invlvd_page" target="_blank">Grameen Bank</a>

Their the ones who started the whole microloan movement <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/tounge.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":p" border="0" alt="tounge.gif" />

Thaldarin

I'm with Tycho this is an investment, no matter how small it is.

moultano

<!--quoteo(post=1611246:date=Mar 4 2007, 12:12 PM:name=TychoCelchuuu)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(TychoCelchuuu @ Mar 4 2007, 12:12 PM) [snapback]1611246[/snapback]</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->
It's not a charity if you're loaning people money. It would only be charity if you didn't expect to get paid back, which means it was a bad loan in the first place and their business ends up failing and nobody ended up better off.
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You aren't getting paid interest on the money when you loan it through kiva, and you otherwise would be. It is in a sense an investment, but it's an investment in someone else's well being. For most of these people, getting a loan would come with 30-40% interest if they went through a bank.

TychoCelchuuu

It's still not charity if you donate $125 and expect to end up with $125 at the same time next year. You're not down any money. Obviously there's the chance they default on the loan but if that's the case your money didn't do any good so it's worse than your average charity.

moultano

<!--quoteo(post=1611282:date=Mar 4 2007, 02:49 PM:name=TychoCelchuuu)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(TychoCelchuuu @ Mar 4 2007, 02:49 PM) [snapback]1611282[/snapback]</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->
It's still not charity if you donate $125 and expect to end up with $125 at the same time next year. You're not down any money. Obviously there's the chance they default on the loan but if that's the case your money didn't do any good so it's worse than your average charity.
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You are giving up the $5 of interest or so that you would have earned on the money, but the great thing is that you produce a lot more good than a mere $5 donation would have accomplished.