gement | Whose hand is that?

Humans are motivated by funny, funny things. Particularly competition. From the "letting the left hand know what the right hand is doing" department...

I meant to throw money at http://www.kiva.org/ over a year ago when I saw it in a magazine article on young innovators. The site lets you make microloans to people in developing parts of the world, and does all the difficult bits of verifying that their partner organizations are doing a good job. It's a wonderful idea.

I was angsting over which loans to invest in (overchoice!) and eventually accidentally closed the browser window and forgot all about it. Until yesterday when a webcomic feed mentioned the site, so I went back...

They have groups now. That means that you can use your donation to vote for a granfalloon of your choice, like the old SETI distributed computing game. That sounds like fun! I could be part of a group by doing something I want to do anyway! Belongingness! Feeling of tribal safety! What good sociologists they are! Let's go see what groups are out there...

http://www.kiva.org/community tells me that as of February 13, 2009, the top-donating group is Atheists, Agnostics, Skeptics, Freethinkers, Secular Humanists and the Non-Religious, holding their own above Team Obama and Kiva Christians. O.M.G.

I'm not usually very vocal about agnosticism. I don't feel like "ridding the world of superstition". But I am thrilled to see this flag waved, that people who say they can have a moral compass without a spiritual lodestone are putting their money where their mouths are. It's meaningless, statistically. If you add up the Christian groups in general, they got us whomped. But that doesn't change the sudden gleeful "We're Number One!" shock of it.

By the way, I was then torn between whether keeping them at #1 or trying to help bump GLBT up from 8th or 9th. I went with #1 because Kiva Christians is very motivated to keep up, so it's almost like donating twice! This is rivalry harnessed for the powers of good.

Anyway, competitive streak indulged, lending spree finally kicked past thought and into action. By what? Competition. Wanting someone to see not what I personally am doing, but what I-my-tribe is capable of.

Whatever gets the job done. Is there a group you'd like to bump? Lots to choose from. Or just do it because you've been meaning to anyway. Whatever gets the job done.

(How the money part works: If you want, you can pull your money back out when they pay it back, but you are of course strongly encouaraged to loop it back into a new loan. You do not earn interest. Given the average default rate, if you do it long enough you can expect to lose maybe 2.3%; about 1 in 40 loans default. Of $24mil completed loans, they've lost $0.5mil, total, ever.

To minimize risk, I put the minimum $25 on different loans so one default will never blow it all away. Edit to note: I'm learning individuals almost never default. To minimize risk, spread loans out over partner organizations. The vast majority of defaults come from an organization with dodgy bookkeeping slipping through Kiva's auditing net. I've now added a comment to this entry listing all default information EVER. It's really clear-cut. Diversify among partners. Update on how not to use their star ratings.)