Pros
Kiva is a place where you'll feel welcome, included, and even loved. Everyone who works there is driven by a passion for helping people, for making positive change in the world. It's a young crowd with a lot of energy and zest. They are earnest and always looking for ways to improve systems, always focused on how to better serve borrowers and lenders. The mission is incredible and everyone is bought in. Work-life balance is amazing, with flexible hours and options to work from home on certain days if you need to. The benefits are generally fantastic, with an option to take a trip to visit a field partner every other year. I feel honored to have worked there, and will always cherish that experience -- there's really no place like Kiva.
Cons
Transparency is a core value at Kiva, but sometimes I felt it went overboard. It's not that transparency is necessarily a bad thing, but the culture of transparency sort of led to an overly democratic structure with too many stakeholders involved in every decision, which makes it difficult to be efficient. Leadership in general was weak, although they've gone through a period of transition at the top for a few years now which is probably the reason, so hopefully the new CEO is helping. If you want to work in nonprofits, you're obviously not driven by salary, but it seemed like Kiva is on the low end even for nonprofits. Kiva also relies on interns to keep running, and these interns swap out every 4-6 months. That means that you're retraining people, explaining basic things from scratch, and maybe shifting responsibilities based on intern competencies every 4-6 months. It can be difficult to plan and grow with this system. There are not a lot of growth opportunities at Kiva -- coupled with the low salaries, that leads to a lot of turnover even though everyone seems to love it there.
