President Bill Clinton helped announce the launch of Kiva City Little Rock, an initiative that expands the availability of crowdfunded microloans for small business owners and aspiring entrepreneurs in the Little Rock area. The program reaches underserved borrowers by crowdfunding loans, connecting current and future small business owners to a global online community where anyone with an Internet connection and $25 or more can lend to a local Arkansas business. Kiva City Little Rock is the latest implementation of the Kiva City Initiative, a partnership between Kiva and Visa launched at the Clinton Global Initiative America meeting in June 2011.
Kiva City Little Rock is a collaboration between Kiva, Visa and Accion Texas, with area nonprofits serving as Kiva Zip Trustees, helping to identify and endorse the borrowers. Part of the power of Kiva City Little Rock is that it is driven by local people with local solutions for starting or expanding small businesses and stimulating job growth.
“Accion Texas began operations in Arkansas in late 2011 and, to date, has made nearly half a million dollars in micro- and small business loans to start-ups and existing small businesses,” Barrera said.
Small dollar loans, or “microloans,” are essential for small businesses to accelerate job growth in Little Rock and across the nation. According to the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA), small businesses create two out of every three new jobs, employ over 50% of private sector employees and produce more than half of the country’s nonfarm GDP.
provides loans as small as $500 and as large as $10,000 — amounts which can be difficult for some entrepreneurs to access from traditional lenders due to the loan size or the borrower’s lack of commercial credit history.
Accion Texas will use its extensive network to identify qualified small businesses in the Little Rock area that would benefit from a loan and then post their profiles on Kiva.org. Accion Texas aims to provide loans up to $10,000 for borrowers, even if they have little to no collateral.
To date, Kiva has launched similar crowdfunded microloan initiatives in more than 50 cities and towns including Detroit, New Orleans, Los Angeles, and Washington, D.C.
Several other area groups and individuals are joining Kiva City Little Rock as Trustees on Kiva Zip. Kiva Zip is a pilot program that aims to expand the number of entrepreneurs accessing microloans through Kiva’s crowdfunding platform. Trustees are technical assistance providers, community groups or individuals committed to supporting social good through entrepreneurship and local job growth. Through Kiva Zip, Trustees do not have to have their own loan programs to connect borrowers to Kiva lenders; instead, they endorse borrowers.
This entry was posted in General News, Investment Platforms and Marketplaces and tagged accion, bill clinton, kiva, kiva arkansas, peer to peer. Bookmark the permalink.