The Kiva debate: crisis communication and bloggers misleading
10:49, 14 October 2009
.. Posted in Development, Relief and Advocacy Efforts.. Link
Center for Global Development research fellow David Roodman set the philanthropy world and the humanitarian world abuzz last week when he wrote that Kiva does not work the way many lenders might think it does. Roodman details how "the person-to-person donor-to-borrower connections created by Kiva are partly fictional." His criticisms of Kiva have been reblogged and caused quite a stir, and a number of knee-jerk reactions. Yet, his comments and supporting details that "What Kiva does behind the scenes is what it should do" and that "technically" Kiva isn't hiding anything aren't being referred to as well.
Before you decide to blog about this subject yourself, or to offer a summary of what's going on, please read Roodman's entire post. Read the ENTIRE post. Many of the people blogging about this obviously haven't.
Kiva Co-Founder and CEO Matt Flannery wrote a detailed response to Roodman's blog, featured on Roodman's blog itself. And it's a good response, one that people interested in crisis communication should read.
Flannery's response on Roodman's blog is not going to be enough, ofcourse; there are too many bloggers out there reposting tiny snippets of Roodman's original blog and glossing over the details in order to create a firestorm of criticism against Kiva. Best of luck to Flannery and Roodman to try to bring the discussion back to the facts. Flannery is going to have to get busy posting replies to a lot more blogs, as it's unlikely they will post links to his reply. In those replies, he should
- quote liberally from Roodman's original blog, as Roodman anticipated a lot of the criticism with several of his original comments,
- point out what Kiva will be doing differently because of Roodman's post and the resulting firestorm,
- defend the practices that Kiva won't be changing because the changes would hurt those Kiva is trying to serve, and
- reiterate that the most important people in the Kiva equation are those that benefit from loans, not the donors.
Kiva needs to be ready to lose some donors, but also to work to change the way remaining donors and new donors think about effective financial aid to the developing world, because that's at the root of this firestorm, IMO.
I'm a Kiva donor, and I'll continue to be one.
