New York Times on Kiva, GlobalGiving, Etc.

[Update: Matt Flannery, Co-Founder and CEO of Kiva.org, replied to the NYT article.]Reporter Stephanie Strom wrote a story in today's New York Times about my blogging of Kiva in October, and the issues it raised. She goes beyond my post in writing about GlobalGiving. Naturally, I think it's a fascinating article.The article also quotes Tim Ogden of Philanthropy Action:

The problem is that they [socially connected nonprofits] are no more connecting donors to people than the child sponsorship organizations of the past did.

That to me goes a bit too far, at least if it is read to apply only to Kiva (and in context, it may not). As I wrote in my original post:

Indeed, Kiva's P2P connections are more solid than those of child sponsorship 15 years ago. The people in the pictures, we can assume, really do get microcredit. Following in the Tribune's footsteps, Nicholas Kristof tracked down one of his borrowers, a Kabul baker, with little difficulty.

I grant that when the Kiva model is carried beyond microfinance, the connection between giver and receiver may be no more direct than in the old days of child sponsorship, and that may be what Tim is saying. With child sponsorship, as I wrote, the Chicago Tribune found that many pictured children had not received promised services. Microfinance seems distinctive in building clearly defined and recorded relationships between the microfinance institution and each beneficiary. Even if my Kiva loan is not actually going to the woman pictured on kiva.org, I'm reasonably confident (I hope not naively) that that woman is getting credit.Update: I've been surprised by the predominant negativity of the new wave of comments from the NYT article. The older comments vary more---some accuse me of condescension to think that users didn't understand how Kiva really works, others expressed disillusionment, and others said "I didn't know but love them anyway." On reflection, I think the NYT headline, "Confusion on Where Money Lent via Kiva Goes," is unfortunate because it makes it seem like Kiva is embezzling the money into bank accounts on the Cayman Islands. No one is seriously suggesting such wrongdoing.