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Kiva MFI Checker (for Firefox)
Created by Chris Means
Chrome version by Radu
Installation Instructions

*NEW* Comprehensive list of MFIs
Each MFI given a secular and social rating.

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Saturday, August 1, 2009

Kiva MFI Checker

Update: 2011-01-03

The Kiva MFI Checker has been around so long it deserves a preamble. Originally conceptualized and created by Chris Means, of our team, it was a Firefox Add-on that allowed you to flag MFIs when viewing Kiva lending search results on the classic/old version of the Kiva lend page. Support for that Firefox Add-on is discontinued. A new slicker version of the Kiva MFI Checker has been created as a Greasemonkey script. If you don't know what Greasemonkey is, don't worry, there's instructions below on how to install everything.

Meanwhile, as all that has occured on the Firefox front, another teammate of ours Radu has created the Kiva MFI Highlighter which is a Google Chrome extension that visually looks and works like a clone of the original Kiva MFI Checker created by Chris Means. If you still miss the old Kiva MFI Checker then follow the instructions below to get everything working in Google Chrome.

The Kiva MFI Checker is now coded to pull from three (3) managed lists of MFIs. One is a list of religious MFIs, the second is a list of secular social MFIs "the do gooders" and the last list is one for MFIs that don't expose a lender to currency risk. The lists can be set as blacklists or whitelists. You can add new Google Spreadsheets as a source list of MFIs. However, that requires some JavaScript programming knowledge. For beginners, the three most popular lists are included by default.

The MFI Highlighter on the other hand is still maintained using your own custom list and that list can act either as a blacklist or a whitelist. These tools are in wide use amongst Kiva Lenders not just members of our own team.

Here is a screenshot of what the results look like when using the Kiva MFI Checker:



(the loan with the black background is flagged because it's a Religious MFI and I selected the Religious MFI list)

This brings one issue to the forefront how do we know if an MFI is religious or not? How do we know if an MFI carries a currency risk?

To determine if a loan/MFI has a currency risk you just need to view the loan and go to the "About The Loan" section and there is a convenient field that lets you know if a corresponding MFI has an associated currency risk.
See this screenshot:



To determine if an MFI is religious or secular there is no easy convenient way to know for sure. Each MFI description must be read and the corresponding MFI website (if any) must be thoroughly researched. In certain cases it can be difficult to make a determination. It would be nice if Kiva (when they have time, as it's not priority #1) could make a new field (or checkbox) where an MFI administrator labels themselves as religious or secular.

Firefox Instructions:
For those who wish to use the Kiva MFI Checker here are some instructions:

1) You must be using Firefox available at:
http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/
2) Install the Greasemonkey Firefox Add-On, click here.
3) Install the Kiva MFI Checker script (currently at version 0.62). You can find it here:
4) Go to the Kiva.org Lend page, and you'll see a new "green bar" at the top of the page (just above the loan listings). The script defaults to the Religous list (as a Black-list), you can change it to use any preconfigured list (currently Currency Risk Sharing, and Social lists are also available), or if you only want to loan to Religous MFIs, make it a White-list.





Update 2010-12-05: Google Chrome Instructions
Radu from our team has created an extension for Google Chrome called the Kiva MFI Highlighter.

Instructions for Google Chrome Kiva MFI Highlighter extension:
1) You must be using Google Chrome available at:
http://www.google.com/chrome
2) Install the Kiva MFI Highlighter found here
3) Open the Chrome menu and go to Tools -> Extensions
4) Click "Options" under the Kiva MFI Highlighter for Chrome
5) Click on the appropriate field partner name and click the Append button. Alternatively, you can copy and paste a list of MFIs. I have provided the list of Christian MFIs below.
6) Go to http://www.kiva.org/lend you will see the name of the MFI highlight if it's in the list.



Here is the list of Religious MFIs:




By Peter

Update: Updated the MFI list on August 16, 2009. Thanks again Chris ;)

Update: Updated the MFI list on August 18, 2009. Added: CREDIT, a partner of World Relief

Update: Changed Gata Daku Multi-purpose Cooperative to Gata Daku Multi-purpose Cooperative (GDMPC) on October 10th, 2009

Update: Modified Religious MFI list to load from a Google Spreadsheet and added Pearl Microfinance Limited on October 17th, 2009

Update: Added "Fundacion D-MIRO Mision Alianza" to the list on November 22nd, 2009

Update: Added "Faulu Kenya" to the list on November 29th, 2009

Update: 2010-02-05 Caurie (MFI ID 105) changed to uppercase, Dinari (MFI ID 82) changed to MUK

Update: 2010-03-04 Added "Fundacion Realidad A.C (FRAC), a partner of World Vision International" (MFI ID 130) and "HOFOKAM Ltd., a partner of Catholic Relief Services" (MFI ID 163)

Update: 2010-06-20 Added
"Urwego Opportunity Bank of Rwanda (UOB), a partner of World Relief, HOPE International, and Opportunity International" (MFI ID 161) and "Amasezerano Community Banking S.A." (MFI ID 170) and "AREGAK Unversal Credit Organization" (MFI ID 152) and "Turame Community Finance, a partner of World Relief and HOPE International (Burundi)" (MFI ID 162)

Update: 2010-06-23 Added "Paglaum Multi-Purpose Cooperative (PMPC)" (MFI ID 126)

Update: 2010-10-31 Updated name for MFI ID 138

29 comments:

FlyGracefully said...

This is awesome. I had posted about Kiva to my local atheist group a while ago so I updated it with this tool. Are there any other religions like Islam with MFIs? Christians can't be the only religious group.

Unknown said...

Thank you for the list of christian MFIs. It saved me the legwork of doing it myself. I have been looking for a guide of this type.

These are the organizations that will get my dollars.

Thanks again.

Juanjo said...

Hi there!

Thanks for this info. I just joined your same Kiva group (I am an atheist). I appreciate the utility of this application, but instead of looking at the religious affiliation of the MFI, don't you think it would be much more useful to see the interest rates that the MFI's charge to the people they give the money to? Many MFI charge 15, 20, and 30% interest, and others (some of which are religious) charge only a 7% interest.
Isn't the purpose of our loans to help people out of poverty, one small loan at a time? I think that looking at the interest rates, instead of the religion affiliation, is a much better way to do it.

Thanks!

Best,

Juan

arevaco said...

Hello from Spain
You can include in your list of christians:
Hattha Kaksekar Limited (HKL), a partner of Save the Children.
Save the children and all of those created and related whith INTERMON OXFAM.

Intermon is a creation of the spaniard "CompaƱia de Jesus" they hide this information in the "wold version" but you can read in the spanish version http://www.intermonoxfam.org/cms/HTML/espanol/2751/Identidad_IO.pdf

Thanks

arevaco said...

Add Pearl Microfinance Limited because is controled by Feed the Children and you can see what they tell at http://www.feedthechildren.org/site/PageServer?pagename=org_about_ftc

"Feed The Children is a Christian, international, nonprofit relief organization with headquarters in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, "

paul said...

Hey, I'm the creator of the nuclearspike.com/kiva app (safe loan search) and because of the convos in the Atheist group, I've added the ability to exclude religious groups (not yet publicly released, but has started testing) and was hoping that your google spreadsheet docs also has the IDs so that I can easily keep my app in sync with the changes that happen with the dock.

Tropical Pete said...

Hey Paul,

Your app is really cool, I've used it several times. I've modified the google doc to add the MFI IDs in the second column.

Thanks for adding such a feature to your app, I'm sure many many team members will appreciate the feature.

Please let me know when the feature is live on the Internet and I'll announce it to the Atheists et al Team.

Cheers,
Pete
Team Captain

paul said...

Hey Pete,

You can see a beta version in action here: nuclearspike.com/kiva/beta

I'm upgrading a number of other features at the same time (and moving from Silverlight 2 to 3 which broke stuff), and unfortunately things are a little wonky at the moment (can't filter by clicking on the pie slices, the process sometimes stalls in the middle and the lender analyzer has to be run twice to get the second set of charts to populate properly).

But feel free to check it out in the meantime -- but just be prepared for things to go weird sometimes. :) I'm leaving on a week-long vacation tomorrow, so it won't get updated for a while.

Thanks for updating the list with the IDs, that will make things easy!

paul said...

Juanjo, is there a central list for the MFI's interest rates that is maintained? I would like to add that as an optional slider restriction when searching for loans in my app.

I want my app's search features to have all the extra bits for those who are looking deeper than just country, sector or gender.

It would be interesting to see the relationship of the partner rating to the interest rates, since MFIs crank the interest up to cover the loans that go bad to keep their defaults/delinq at 0% and 5 star... This search would work great to weed out a bunch... since currently many of my search features are all excluding loans/partners from the same direction, to make things better for the lender... I would like to add things that make things better for the entrepreneur as well to find those in the sweet spot and reward the MFIs that don't gouge.

Anonymous said...

Cool, but this should really be a greasemonkey script, not an extension. That way it would consume less memory and be less prone to slowing down firefox.

Bill said...

another one to add to the default list:

Fundacion Realidad A.C (FRAC), a partner of World Vision International

paul said...

I have an update to the nuclearspike Safe Loan app. In addition to other upgrades, you can now optionally remove religious MFIs as you search for loans.

http://www.kivabank.org

Enjoy!

(I'm upgrading it several times a week, so if the site is not responsive, just try back later.)

paul said...

In addition to being able to remove religious MFIs, Kiva Bank now lets you filter down to only the MFIs listed in the Social MFIs spreadsheet listed on this blog.

Also, due to the attention on Profit and Interest charged to the borrowers that the NYT article brought, it also now has the ability to select the ranges of profit and interest that you consider to be fair and only look at matching loans.

StefanMuc said...

Step 6 appears not to work anymore as described - the format of the table does not allow copy/pasting into the application.

From a user point of view it would be nicer if the list was in app, or if the app could load the list from a URL.

Unknown said...

Here is the same list, but formatted for easy copy and paste into MFI checker:

Ahon sa Hirap, Inc. (ASHI)


Alalay sa Kaunlaran, Inc. (ASKI)


Amasezerano Community Banking S.A.


AREGAK Unversal Credit Organization


CAURIE Microfinance, a partner of Catholic Relief Services


Center for Community Transformation Credit Cooperative (CCT)


Christian Rural Aid Network (CRAN)


Community Economic Ventures, Inc. (CEVI), a partner of VisionFund International


CREDIT, a partner of World Relief


Koperasi Mitra Usaha Kecil (MUK)


Esperanza International Dominican Republic, a partner of HOPE International


FAPE


Faulu Kenya


Fundacion D-MIRO Mision Alianza


Fundacion Realidad A.C (FRAC), a partner of World Vision International


Gata Daku Multi-purpose Cooperative (GDMPC)


Hagdan sa Pag-uswag Foundation, Inc. (HSPFI)


HOFOKAM Ltd., a partner of Catholic Relief Services


HOPE DRC, a partner of HOPE International


HOPE Ukraine/Nadiya, a partner of HOPE International



Kenya Agency for Development of Enterprise and Technology (KADET), a partner of World Vision International


Local Enterprise Assistance Program (LEAP), a partner of World Hope International and World Relief


Opportunity International- Wedco Ltd.


Pearl Microfinance Limited


Paglaum Multi-Purpose Cooperative (PMPC)


Salone Microfinance Trust (SMT), a partner of ChildFund International


Sinapi Aba Trust (SAT)


Small and Micro Enterprise Programme (SMEP)


Tanaoba Lais Manekat Foundation (TLM)


Turame Community Finance, a partner of World Relief and HOPE International


UIMCEC, a partner of ChildFund International


Urwego Opportunity Bank of Rwanda (UOB), a partner of World Relief, HOPE International, and Opportunity International


Vision Finance Company s.a. (VFC), a partner of World Vision International

Unknown said...

Great list and great effort putting it together. I actually just made a loan via an MFI on this list before I came to this page (ugh), but now I'll know for the future.

Unknown said...

Could there be people seeking loans in a region where all MFI's are religion affiliated? If I knew this I would consider loaning despite the affiliation. I wouldn't want a country to be filtered out by this criteria.

Unknown said...

I can't get the Grease Monkey script to install. When I click the install button nothing happens. Other scripts work fine. It is just this one.

Karim said...

interesting to see atheists behave like religios fanatics, this is exactly what a lot of members of organised religions would do, only donate to people who agree with their religions views, so well done.

Karim said...

Another thing, this site was founded by a Christian, so maybe atheists need to further segregate their clan away from everyone else and set up their own site, so religious people are not involved in any way shape or form to their "do goodness"

Hugo said...

@Karim
I'm an atheist, but if the founder of Kiva is a Christian, I don't really think it matters.

As for your other point, I think atheists are perfectly entitled to not want to give money to organisations that promote religion. Doing that does not make me the same as a religious fanatic. (And no implication that all religious people are fanatics btw!)

oldpedro said...

Hi - the link to the kiva loan checker addin is 404. I guess it should be:
http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/101738
or:
http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/86187

Chris Lindley said...

Hmmm, the checker doesn't seem to be working in FF 10.0.2. I can see the green bar no problem but it's not blacking out any posts.

Anyone else having this problem?

Unknown said...

I've got Firefox 11, and it doesn't seem to work.

Anonymous said...

It's not working for me. It seems to be there and all, it just won't do anything.

Mark Wade said...

The drop down "List" list DOES have quantities in brackets but the message shows "MFI Checker: ? loans flagged on this page" and nothing is blacked out. I'm using Firefox 12.0
Hope you can help. Thanks.

gekkieboembi said...

I'm not sure how your determine some of the less obvious MFI as religious, but I could not find anything on Koperasi Mitra Usaha Kecil (MUK) which indicate it is religious or religiously affiliated.

gekkieboembi said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Joseph said...

Thank you so much for the list.. I've been looking for a list of Christian organizations that I can donate to! It's amazing how God has always (and continues) to use unbelievers to bring glory to His kingdom. Thank you Lord!