Blog: International Development

Creating a Success Online Community that Gets Returns

Premal Shah, the president of Kiva, talked yesterday about some of the ways that Kiva's online platform engages people and has created a community of microfinance lenders and borrowers.

Kiva connects small business owners in developing countries with micro lenders around the world through an online platform. The business owners, usually working through their micro bank on the ground in their country, post information about their business, their business plan, and the amount of money they want to borrow to make it happen. Lenders around the world can go to the site, decide who they want to lend to, and then lend the money using their credit cards (and in amounts as low as $25). Borrowers then pay the money back to the lenders over time. 

It's a simple idea, and it's run on an online platform that facilitates the whole business. Premal ran through some of the strategy behind the system. Much of what he said echoes what we tell our clients who are trying to engage a community online and is relevant to every organization trying to do so. Here are a few of the points I find most important.

• Highlight the people in your community. Kiva posts big pictures of its small business owners along with their background, their business plan, and the amount they want to borrow, and lenders can create a profile that the business owners and other lenders can see. This goes a long way in helping people get to know one another and bridging the physical gap between them.

  It also shows off some of their successes.

Our Picks for Local Tech Events

It’s another busy week in DC for techies who must choose between a ton of interesting events taking place. Our picks for the week are below, and you can check out the full calendar of events is here. If you attend any of these events, be sure to stop by and say hi :)

Monday

DC Drupal Meetup: We’ll be here to talk about the latest Drupal projects we’re working on and see what other people are up to. This is a great event for all people who use or are interested in Drupal since the conversation won’t be overly technical.

Tuesday

Democratizing Development: How Technology is Disrupting Traditional Development Models. This event will look at whether technology will displace development organizations as it fuels person to person poverty fighting work, or whether donor agencies will use technology to benefit their work.   

NetSquared: Pimp my Nonprofit is back and this month the group will be revamping Global Giving's online image. 

Thursday

Party On...line with the RNC and DNC: Internet Advocacy Roundtable is bringing together online strategists from the Democratic National Committee and Republican National Committee for a talk on what they’re both doing online. 

Hope you can make it out to a few events this week!

Listen to the Podcast Interview: Open Source for NGO's

Yesterday Jason Wojciechowski from the UN Millennium Campaign interviewed our own Eric Gundersen about his thoughts on how nonprofit organizations can use open source applications like Drupal for the End Poverty Blog. Eric talks, amongst other things, about how the accessibility of Drupal and some of its newer features like multilingual support make it a leading application for nonprofits of all sizes located around in the world.

Listen to the podcast.

Help Us Work on This New Tool

Managing News is a Drupal powered news tracker and analyzer that helps communications teams and PR firms monitor news and trends across the internet. We're looking for a few smart, creative engineers to join our tight knit team to work on this new tool. If you're interested in Drupal, the news, aggregation, and working on a totally different type of tool, check out the job description. Drop us a line if you want to learn more: jobs@managingnews.com.