Comment by akudha
2 hours ago
This is my experience with Microfinance
I've been funding Microfinance loans, $25 at a time, for a while now. Just checked the numbers - I have spent only about 5K in total, made almost 68K for ~2900 loans (keep recycling the money when repayments come in).
Lost motivation for a few years in between, after Covid. Used to think it is just $25, what difference can it make? I was totally wrong. $25 won't even get a good pizza these days in most American cities, it is not a lot in the west. But it can have amazing purchasing power in Africa, parts of Asia etc.
What I am trying to say is - even if we have just $10, it is okay, it can be of immense help to someone. There is Watsi, there is Kiva, Doctors without Borders and many more great projects, like Tanzania Education Project.
Here is a very simplistic (and optimistic) calculation by ChatGPT - simply loaning $25 month consistently can help more than a 1000 people in 20 years
https://chatgpt.com/share/6ac80150-feb8-83e8-a6b0-4b162c056a...
I used to think I need lots of capital to help, this shows how wrong that line of thinking is.
Is that profit or revenue? If it was profit it would be $23 per loan which suggests that the loan interest would have been 100% which I find hard to believe.
But more importantly, can you share the details of how you did that practically? Did you do this yourself or as part of a larger organization who just took your money and paid you back later?
There is no profit/interest for lenders. I do it through kiva.org Kiva doesn't make the loans directly either - they partner with local organizations in the countries they operate in. Any interest these local orgs charge, is for their operating expenses. Lenders on Kiva do not get interest. There is also a chance of losing money if loans are defaulted, due to currency exchange loss etc (I have to check the exact amount, but I have lost some due to defaults)
https://www.kiva.org/about/how
I also tried a couple of other Microfinance orgs (can't remember the names now), but kept going back to Kiva. Been doing it for 15 years, so it slowly adds up, even though I wasn't consistent.
There is no profit/interest for lenders
That's what I expected. Thanks. Your wording: "made almost 68K for ~2900 loans" had me confused. Making money means profit or income to me. You didn't make any money but you helped 2900 people.
68k/25=2720. That suggests that the defaults are less than 10%. That's not so bad I think.
Thanks for reminding me. Used to be big on it when I was younger. Just put US$50 towards someone.
I think that’s how much money was loaned with $25 dollars being loaned, paid back, loaned, paid back.