Tamara Sanderson: Kiva.org

I’m Tamara Sanderson, and in 2008-09 I spent four months as head of marketing and recruitment for Kiva's volunteer Fellows and Translation Programs. I had always planned on taking an Oliver Wyman Non-Profit Fellowship (NPF) since joining our Dallas office two and a half years ago. The company gives you time off to serve a non-profit and pays you a stipend when you return to work. Kiva is changing lives in the developing world, and I was excited to be able to play a part.

This summer Tamara is participating in Kiva's Fellows Program (KF8) working with XacBank in Mongolia. To read more about Tamara's experience in Mongolia and her thoughts on microlending, visit Kiva.org.


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Changing Lives One Loan at a Time

 

Leaders of the microfinance and philanthrocapitalism movements
January 18, 2009

Lyndsey Erickson (an Oliver Wyman associate based in Boston) and I were invited to join six Kiva Staff members for the 2008 awards dinner of the World Affairs Council of Northern California, held last November. The honoree was Muhammad Yunus, founder of Grameen Bank, which has provided microfinance loans to the poor in Bangladesh for more than 30 years. In 2006, Professor Yunus and Grameen Bank received the Nobel Peace Price “for their efforts to create economic and social development from below.”  You can listen to a podcast or watch a video of an interview with Professor Yunus conducted by Jane Wales, president and CEO of the World Affairs Council of Northern California (shown in the photo at left), on the council's website (itsyourworld.org).

I think my favorite part was seeing Jessica Flannery, co-founder of Kiva, and Professor Yunus sitting next to each other, as both Grameen Bank and Kiva were being recognized at the dinner. Only a few years earlier, Jessica sat in the audience listening to Professor Yunus at Stanford University; she took his words to heart and the rest is history :) 

Matt Flannery, CEO and co-founder of Kiva, was invited to speak at The Economist’s two-day conference “Corporate Citizenship: Building a Sustainable Business,” also in November. I was able to attend the event, which was led by Matthew Bishop, author (with Michael Green) of Philanthrocapitalism.  As a management consultant, I found it particularly engaging to hear the discussions about how businesses are aligning their philanthropic goals with their corporate strategies.

To learn more about the topic, check out the website philanthrocapitalism.net/, which features Bishop and Green's book.


A fistful of dollars
January 7, 2009

Kieran Ball, a Kiva Fellow in Cambodia, recently posted a great video on the Kiva Fellows blog.  I think it clearly tells the Kiva story – plus, it is pretty entertaining.

The video starts in London where Kieran and his former Credit Suisse colleagues make a loan to Van Makara.

Kieran travels to Kiva in San Francisco and the headquarters of field partner AMK in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, before ending up in Preak Tamao Village with a visit to Van Makara.

Enjoy!

Why I chose Kiva for my Non-Profit Fellowship
December 23, 2008  

The opportunities are endless for an NPF at Oliver Wyman – from working with businesswomen in Bangladesh to consulting on farming techniques in Africa to protecting the rainforest in South America.

I think my decision to volunteer at Kiva is best explained by an answer I gave when filling out my bio for 2041, an organization formed to protect the continent of Antarctica. Last spring, I was selected by Oliver Wyman to go with 2041 on a three-week leadership and environmental expedition to Antarctica. In preparation for the trip, I was asked to answer a few questions, including the following:

Main Entry:   paradigm shift
Part of Speech:   noun
Definition:   acceptance by a majority of a changed belief, attitude, or way of doing things
Webster's New Millennium™ Dictionary of English, Preview Edition (v 0.9.7) Copyright © 2003-2008 Dictionary.com, LLC
Q: What would you like to be known for in life? What would be your personal footprint on the world?

A: I want to contribute to a paradigm shift in my lifetime, one that has a profound impact on society.

Kiva is a paradigm shift – it has changed the way people view non-profit microfinance and online crowd funding. The countless business-model copycats from Wokai.org to Onespine.org testify to this point; an article entitled “Kiva is a Menace” was recently published on Social Edge, detailing this “internet fundraising phenomenon.”

Kiva allows individuals like you and me to get involved in the microfinance movement: through Web 2.0, lenders and borrowers can engage in a virtual online marketplace. It is turning traditional philanthropy on its head and paving the way for new, innovative social enterprises.

To be frank, I am merely riding on Kiva’s entrepreneurial coattails and helping by consulting on certain business problems, creating recruitment strategies, and developing analytical reports. Simply being a part of Kiva.org’s business growth and working with the inventors and executors of this paradigm shift has been an incredibly rewarding and educational experience.


Kiva men sprout hair for charity
December 17, 2008  

An abnormal number of mustaches débuted in the Kiva office in November and December, ranging in style and exuberance from the “Tom Selleck” to the “Pre-adolescent Teenager.” Photos of past mustaches and emails written in the third person from “the ‘stache,” quickly circulated around the office.  

So, why the influx of mustaches – was it a new Kiva fad? No, it was actually Mustaches for Kids, a four-week US/Canadian competition that supports a different charity each year; this year M4K raised money for Donor’s Choose, an online crowd-funding website for school supplies and classroom projects. Growers in the San Francisco chapter of M4K won the competition this year (barely beating out the NYC growers) by raising $79K for the cause.  

In total, we had 10 attempts at mustache-growing, with two people quitting mid-competition due to a trip to Vegas with old college friends and an accidental shave. Approximately 25 percent of the Kiva staff grew mustaches, creating quite a “hairy situation” in the office (sorry, I couldn’t resist the pun). In fact, all outside visitors were immediately given the mustache-competition preface upon entering the office, so they would not be suspicious of the abundance of mustaches.  

At the actual Mustache Bash, the competition finale and ‘stash beauty pageant, the Kiva group dressed as 70s Olympic athletes performed haikus about their mustaches on stage. Luckily, the mustaches have since been shaven, and life at Kiva seems a bit more normal on the outside. 


A new addiction
December 15, 2008
 
I have two main addictions that originated in college and have been fueled by Oliver Wyman: coffee and travel. Caffeine is always flowing through my veins, peaking the week before a final deliverable, and I get the travel itch anytime I am in one place for more than a few months.
 
Tonight, at the Kiva Content Management Marathon, I think I acquired a new addiction: editing loans. From 4 to 9 p.m., volunteers from the Bay Area and Kiva staff gathered around tables and on the couches downstairs to translate and edit borrowers’ loans, which quickly hit Kiva.org for funding.
 
Eating snacks and joking about terminology, I simultaneously felt connected to the group of normally online volunteers, along with the hard-working entrepreneurs from around the world. At 9:15 p.m., I was still in the Kiva office, hooked on editing loans; I could barely tear myself away to catch my bus. I was experiencing a gambler’s rush, while doing something good for the world.
 
Listed below, please find a few of my favorite excerpts from tonight (in the original text):

And, this is why we need editors:


So, once I return to Oliver Wyman in January, if you notice I have black circles under my eyes, it may actually be from late-night Kiva editing, rather than model building and ppt perfecting. 
 
If you would like to register as a translator, please visit www.kiva.org/volunteer and sign up on Viva, Kiva's volunteer assignment management system; those interested in applying as an editor should follow the same sign-up process plus send an e-mail to Kiva's editing coordinator, Kristy@kiva.org. 


Bragging on Kiva
December 6, 2008

Through an online marketplace, Kiva.org connects lenders to borrowers in the developing world, empowering them to lift themselves out of poverty.

Although microfinance had been practiced for several decades, it lacked a connection point with the mass public. Instead of forming another microfinance bank or cannibalizing work already taking place in the microfinance space, Kiva created something new: It moved the lending portion of the value chain from large financial institutions to a crowd-funding model available to the public online.
 
The concept is simple on the surface, yet there are many operational layers and extremely bright and hard-working people that have made Kiva a success.

The organization’s 35 people has been responsible for

So, what exactly do Oliver Wyman consultants help with? Essentially, we are an internal business development team, helping with analytics, strategy, and implementation of new products / business designs. We also have perfect attendance at all Kiva social events, with a specialty focus on karaoke and Rock Band  ; )

This list is an absolute good
December 5, 2008

I have had a difficult time putting my impression of Kiva into words. Phrases like “great” and “amazing” seem superficial, yet so many words miss the essence of Kiva. At our town hall meeting with the board of directors on Friday, I think I finally found an accurate way to describe Kiva.

In typical Kiva fashion – while sitting on couches and eating pizza – Alex, a member of the board, recalled the scene in Schindler’s List where Stern tells Schindler, “This list is an absolute good. This list is life.”

Similarly, Kiva is an absolute good from both a macro and a micro perspective, having an impact on everyone it touches. By empowering the borrowers, connecting the lenders to the goal of alleviating poverty, and energizing its volunteers, it has created a paradigm shift in the way people view and exercise social entrepreneurship.