Everyone’s talking about Kiva as a fun place to help save the world, but I think I like Microplace better.
They both do pretty much the same thing: Take your money and help support microlending. Hopefully you get your money back, but that’s not the real point.
On Kiva’s Lend page, you pick a person who apparently needs a loan. There’s a little meter that tells you how much money has been raised for that person’s loan.
But what happens behind the scenes is that you lend to a microlender which has already given that person a loan. In other words, you’re supporting a microlender, not that particular person. Whether you give money or not, that person has already gotten the loan and doesn’t really get anything from your money.
Microplace works exactly the same way, in that you lend to a microlender. But on Microplace’s analogous Find Investments page, you’re not looking at people who seem to need a loan (but actually already got one). You’re looking at the actual microlenders that you’ll be investing in.
With Microplace, the deal is transparent. You’re helping to support microlenders, and you get to choose the ones you want to support. That seems better to me.
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