Getting started

This is the inaugural post for our new philanthropic venture on kiva.org. This is a great site and a really powerful economic model for helping people, so I'm excited that you want to get involved.

If you have looked over the kiva.org site, you see that we have a bewildering number of options. I think we need to start with a simple decision: do we want to (1) join an active team that is currently loaning money (thus building on their success), or (2) create our own team so we can choose who we help and how?

If we join a group, which one?

• Atheists, Agnostics, Sceptics, Freethinkers? They've given over 11 million.
• The University of Iowa team? They've given 10K
• Punks? "This is Just a Punk Rock Song" in Chicago has given 32K!

There seems to be a group for almost anything, and there seems to be flexibility in how each member of the group donates money. If we want our own group, what would we call it? Who would we help? Would we encourage others to join it?

Thoughts, people!