Don’t get me wrong, I think Kiva is a great way to help someone in need out. Sadly, despite beingaround for a year or two, they’ve only loaned out or solicited loans for a few million dollars. A pittance, really, compared to the need and the available capital.

Now, if you’re really looking to make money on your loan portfolio, go check out prosper.com. There you get to make loans with actual interest. And you see the credit risk associated with each borrower. And you can distribute your $$ across multiple loans to mitigate your risk.

this basically has nothing to do with your post, but very interesting that they are using Plone for their efforts. might need to get in touch with them… .

It does sound like prosper.com is a better option, though it looks like their self-serve model favors borrowers who have Internet access, whereas many of the loan recipients on Kiva are repped by development agencies.