April Fools 2010 Loan-A-Thon

Our April Fools 2010 Loan-A-Thon is just over a week away. This year's April Fools loan-a-thon will be held during the 48 hour period from April 1st to April 2nd 2010 (Pacific Time... of course you're always welcome to celebrate in your own time zone). To participate in the Loan-A-Thon all you have to do is make a loan (preferably with new money you've added to Kiva specifically for the Loan-A-Thon... but recycled money is always welcome) during the specified time frame and, if you like, post to the team message board to let everyone know you've participated.

Some team members make pledges in advance for how much new money they will be lending during the Loan-A-Thon to encourage others to follow their lead. Personally, I pledge $100 in new money towards this loan-a-thon.

Our April Fools Loan-A-Thon is best described by Joe from our team:

April 1st - We're no April Fools! We will not waste our money tithing to a religious organization when we can do some actual good by lending capital directly to our fellow Humans who need it!

We have currently just over $1,725,000 dollars lent. I did some quick analysis using Daniel R's stats tool and we are lending at a rate of about $125,000 per month. At this pace we'll be about $150,000 short of our $3,000,000 year end goal. Hopefully we can kick it up a notch as well as attract new members. We've added about 1000 new members so far this year.

It's been exciting to hear about the lending war (the only good type of war) over in the Religious Congregations category in the Kiva Community area between the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster and the Kiva Mormons. I know some of you have been touched by His Noodly Appendage and have taken the call to arms. Good luck in your struggles. Hopefully we can have a 48 hour cease firing of meatball munitions to pay thanks to his Noodliness for spontaneously appearing against all odds when the call was put out for an Intelligent Designer to instantiate and lead us to intellectual victory. RAmen!

By Peter

New Years 2010 Loan-A-Thon Results

The Loan-a-Thon started out slowly. There were almost no loans available on Kiva for all of New Years Eve (dec 31). According to Daniel R's stats we lent about $775 dollars on Dec 31. Based on feedback from the team message board I decided to extended the loanathon another 24 hours to include Jan 2.

We kicked off the New Year with our loan total at $1,360,950 at 12:10am pacific time (the Kiva time zone). I took a screenshot of our team page using my iPhone.


By the time I woke up the morning of Jan 1 the Loan-a-Thon had kicked into high gear thanks to the flood of loans posted by Kiva on the first (Kiva usually has a flood of new loans on the first of every month because they put a specific cap on each MFI which limits how much they can raise in capital through Kiva in any given month).

By the end of new years day (Jan 1) our loan total was 1,379,400 a one day increase of $18,450.
View the screenshot:


Then we hit the Loan-a-Thon overtime of Jan 2 where we raised another $10,475 to bring our loan total to 1,389,875.
View the screenshot:



This was a wildly successful Loan-a-thon, perhaps our most successful ever. We raised $29,700 in loans, 958 loans, added 69 new members and on Jan 1 we had 52 posts on the team message board; which I believe is a one day record. Getting the word out early and cross posting to our facebook group as well as the natural return of team members to Kiva through the holidays helped make this a great Loan-a-thon. We had many pledges from our teammates which helped to encourage each other to find a little more "entertainment" money from our budgets to fatten our Kiva portfolios. After seeing what my teammates had pledged, I increased my pledge from
$100 to $200 in new money.

I've bounced around the idea of setting our 2010 year end goal as loaning $3,000,000 on the team message board. Based on the feedback I am going to officially set our 2010 year end goal to raise a total of $3 million dollars in loans including what we have loaned to date.

Happy New Year,
Pete

New Years 2010 Loan-A-Thon

Our News Years 2010 Loan-A-Thon is coming up soon. Last year we had a very exciting Loan-A-Thon because Team Obama challenged us to a time-shifted Loan-A-Thon. We lent at New Years and they lent during Obama's inauguration.

This years Loan-A-Thon will take place during the 48 hours of December 31 to January 1st Pacific Time (although we are flexible since everyone is in different time zones). To participate in the Loan-A-Thon all you have to do is make a loan (preferably with new money you've added to Kiva specifically for the Loan-A-Thon) during the specified time frame and, if you like, post to the team message board to let everyone know you've participated.

Some team members make pledges in advance for how much new money they will be lending during the Loan-A-Thon to encourage others to follow their lead.

On another note, I think we should set our 2010 year-end lending goal as $3 million dollars in total loans lent.

Cheers,
Pete

2nd Annual Halloween Loan-A-Thon

Our Halloween Loan-A-Thon has already started, so come and join the fun. This is our 2nd Annual Halloween Loan-A-Thon and and since last years Halloween Loan-A-Thon was our first ever Loan-A-Thon (suggested by team member Shaun/Chelsea) it makes celebrating this one extra special.

During Loan-A-Thons our members try to stretch themselves a bit beyond what they would normally loan and add some new money into the Kiva system. We cheer each other on and join in on the lively discussions on our team board.

For this Loan-A-Thon we are also engaging in another good deed for Kiva. We are participating in the America's Giving Challenge on Facebook. Read some background information on this challenge from Kiva.

Challenge Details:
WHEN: Halloween Loan-A-Thon [between 3pm October 31st and 3pm November 1st EASTERN time]
WHO: Our team members and Loan-A-Thon participants
WHAT: Donate $10 to Kiva using thru Facebook Causes:
https://www.causes.com/fb/donations/new?cause_id=559
WHY: Help Kiva win a daily prize and help give a big boost to the Overall challenge and help Kiva win $50,000.


By Peter

PRESS RELEASE: Atheists Lead The Movement To End Poverty

I have written a press release to announce our team's accomplishment of lending $1 million:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact: your name here
Tel: your telephone # here
Email: your email here

Atheists Lead The Movement To End Poverty

In just over one year the community of Atheists, Agnostics, Skeptics, Freethinkers, Secular Humanists and the Non-Religious (AASFSHNR) at Kiva.org have raised $1 million (USD) in interest-free loans to help end poverty. Kiva.org is a US non-profit organization that connects lenders with borrowers, from around the globe, who need a micro-finance loan. Peter Kroll, the AASFSHNR community team leader, created the community on August 28th, 2008 with the ambition to organize those who share his world view that "people should care about reducing the suffering of other human beings because we acknowledge the evolutionary fact that we are all one human family."

Kiva's co-founder Matt Flannery has put out his call that "now is a time for the world's privileged to demonstrate to the world's poor just how compassionate and resilient we are." The AASFSHNR community has responded, as well as many other communities and individuals. More than four years after Kiva's founding almost $100 million has been lent worldwide.

Micro-finance is the brain-child of Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Mohammad Yunus. Yunus realized decades ago, on a visit to a poor village in his country of Bangladesh, that the local people were caught in an endless cycle of debt caused by loan-sharks. He realized what a difference it would make by "removing the barriers faced by the poor so that they can unleash their creativity and intelligence in the service of humanity."

I would like to recruit volunteers from each major city to email or fax the press release above with your personal contact information to your local newspaper or tv outlet. I've received advice that it's good to have a local representative as most news stories are told with a local angle.

Remember, if the media contacts you, you are representing our team so stay positive and be friendly. Talk about the need to make positive change in the world, our teams friendly competitions, our constant goal setting and breaking, our fun loan-a-thons and the sense of community feeling you get from being a part of the team.

Spread the word.... feel free to send letters to the editors, email blogs and tell friends. Anyway to let the world know.

Cheers,
Pete
Team Captain

Kiva Atheists first to reach $1 million

On October 7th 2009 around noon PST our team of Atheists, Agnostics, Skeptics, Freethinkers, Secular Humanists and the Non-Religious surpassed our year-end goal of lending one million dollars (USD)!



Congratulations to all team members new and old. We have now officially built a community hub for secular people on the Internet. By the time this year ends we'll have blown past our goal and 2010 will likely see a flood of new team members as our almost 6000 members spread the word amongst the larger online secular community.

Kiva posted their congratulations on the Kiva blog and Premal Shah, Kiva's President, stopped by our team message board with these words of congratulations:

Hi Everyone -

Someone just sent an email to Kiva's office about this team hitting the $1M milestone. On behalf of Kiva's staff, CONGRATULATIONS and THANKS for being such an amazing community of lenders. We're inspired!

- Premal

Premal Shah
President
Kiva.org

Time to spread the word... Heather from our team has created a press release:

A Million Dollars of Micro Finance

One million dollars is a lot of money, especially for entrepreneurs around the world turning to microfinance institutions for loans. One million is the amount lent to these entrepreneurs by the team Atheists, Agnostics, Skeptics, Freethinkers, Secular Humanists and the Non-Religious (AASFSHNR) at Kiva.org. Through Kiva, anyone can lend $25 or more to an entrepreneur looking for assistance. When a borrower repays, the money becomes available to re-lend.

AASFSHNR, just over 1 year old, is the first group to reach $1,000,000. Despite the modest goal of $50k in four months, 10 days after creation AASFSHNR hit $10,000. As the loans were paid back, or new money was lent, the group total climbed faster and faster.

AASFSHNR is a fantastic example of the generosity of atheists and others who fit into the group’s theme. We don’t always agree when posting on the team forum, but we do work hard to fund loans. In addition to our group’s milestone, Kiva is fast approaching an even more impressive moment. Collectively, Kiva lenders have lent nearly $100 million around the world. I invite everyone to Kiva. While you are at it, you’re welcome to visit us heathens.

Heather (check the team message board for her contact info or send her a private message on Kiva.org).

Hilton from our team posted about our milestone to his blog.

Exciting times....

Cheers,
Pete
Team Captain

Welcome to the Team

Welcome to the Atheists, Agnostics, Skeptics, Freethinkers, Secular Humanists and the Non-Religious team! You've found your way to the team blog. The team has three Team Captains: Pete, Jan and Nancy Somers.

This blog post is an attempt to bring you up to speed on some team knowledge that would otherwise take you a few weeks or months to learn by monitoring our team message board over at Kiva.

Want to know how to make your loans count for the team? You can't make any of your existing loans count for the team. You can only make new loans count for the team. During the process of making a new loan you will see a drop down menu where you can choose to count the loan towards this team.

There are no rules or guidelines for how and who you should loan to. The decision is up to you. Whatever decision you make you will be helping someone and that's what matters.

Some of our team members like to avoid religious Micro Finance Institutions (MFIs or Field Partners). For various reasons... maybe because some of those MFIs participate in religious evangelism or maybe because they contribute to the spread of false information. Some members of our team have sent emails to Kiva suggesting that Kiva have a new data field where the MFI information is displayed letting us know whether an organization is secular or not. They have said they will consider the suggestion but with no promises. In the mean time we have compiled a pretty good list of religious MFIs and a team member of ours, Chris Means, has created a plugin for Firefox (instructions) that highlights MFIs in your list right in the browser when you are surfing Kiva's loans pages.

Now that the serious business is over with let me tell you about some of the fun events we participate in. We have four annual Loan-A-Thons. On Halloween, New Years, April fools day and Mohammud Yunus' birthday. During our Loan-A-Thons we try and put new money into the system and have a fun and merry time making the world a better place.

Here is a schedule and description for each Loan-A-Thon (adapted from Joe's original summarization):

January 1st (New Years) - Make your Happy New Year by loaning capital to your fellow Humans who need it so that they can have their own Happy New Year!

April 1st (April Fools) - We're no April Fools! We will not waste our money tithing to a religious organization when we can do some actual good by lending capital directly to our fellow Humans who need it!

July 1st (Muhammad Yunus' Birthday and Many National Sovereignty Celebrations) - In honor of those throughout history who have thrown off the yoke of oppressive governments in July, we will lend capital to our fellow Humans who need it so that they can throw off the oppressive yoke of poverty! Also, we pay tribute to Muhammad Yunus's Birthday (June 28th) the Grandfather of Microfinance!

November 1st (Halloween) - The day after celebrating Halloween do something else to scare religious organizations! Lend capital to our fellow Humans who need it so that they can materially improve their lives and no longer need the false comfort provided by an irrational belief system!

Want to analyze our team's rise to the top by digging through some historical statistical data? Check out this cool Stats App by Daniel R. Many thanks to Daniel R for independently maintaining statistics of our teams performance and we owe him a debt of gratitude for it.

One thing to know about Kiva's system is that even though Kiva Lenders earn no interest on their loans, the Field Partner (MFI) charges interest. The reason they charge interest is so they can be a sustainable business or non-profit organization. The interest rates they charge sometimes seem high if you come from North America or Europe. However, there is good reasons for the high interests rates (which are much lower than the loan sharks in the respective countries). The reasons include, high inflation, high ratio between administration costs and loan amount, no collateral from the borrower, etc. Here is a good article (PDF) discussing high interest rates and MFIs.

Our message board at Kiva is not the only place to socialize with your teammates. Jim has created a Facebook Group and Edz has created a FriendFeed page that are more suitable for threaded discussions and multimedia links. A good place to find other Kiva discussions with the whole Kiva community is over at kivafriends.org

It's important to remember when chatting on the team board to be respectful of your fellow teammate. We may not agree on many things but we do agree on the inherent worth of all human beings and that we should try to solve our problems using reason and not superstition. Oh and please don't spam.

Cheers,
Pete
Team Captain (1 of 3)