Imagine directly connecting your donors to those who actually benefit from their donations!
Kiva.org CEO Matt Flannery has done Just That. Kiva the first Web site to let anyone with a PayPal account donate, has recently had phenomenal success with connecting individual lenders to specific entrepreneurs in developing third world countries by using new advances in the social web. Kiva’s fundraising model is based on being fun, engaging and connecting lenders and those receiving loans.
The major reason for Kiva’s success is the donor experience Kiva gives their lenders. The giving process becomes an engaging, and a one on one experience between the donor and those in need. These types of inter-personal connections create invaluable bonds within an organization that go beyond the traditional donor & beneficiary relationship.
Kiva describes the giving process they have created like this: “We facilitate connections. Kiva is using the power of the internet to facilitate one-to-one connections that were previously prohibitively expensive.”
Kiva.org has figured out that donors are seeking real life experiences and not just a worthy cause to donate to.