Pros
I really enjoy working at Kiva for 3 main reasons: the mission, my co-workers and the challenge of the work. There aren’t many organizations that provide the opportunity to have such a direct positive impact on peoples lives around the word as Kiva (through our mission). The kind of people that Kiva tends to attract are good hearted, smart and passionate about what they do. These are people who are really good to be around on a daily basis both because they are nice folks but also because they are sharp and you can learn a lot from them. Finally, the work itself is interesting because there are difficult problems to solve in order to have the greatest impact we can in the world. I think this is the case across departments in Kiva. Much of Kiva’s work leverages technology to do what we do, so as an engineer, the work I do ties in directly to the impact we have in the world, which is quite satisfying. It is worth noting that there have been some major transition underway in Kiva. One involves broadening our mission from a narrower peer to peer lending focus to a broader focus on expanding financial inclusion. There have been many heartfelt discussions within Kiva about the how people feel about this change. Personally, I’m happy that Kiva has broadened the mission because I feel it will allow us to have a positive impact on more people. Peer to peer lending is still our primary focus, but with the new mission we’re now able to experiment with things like building national identity and credit bureau systems that over time can help bring more capital into developing nations and help people move up the financial ladder from micro-finance by increasing access to bank accounts. Another part of the transition over the past couple of years has been one of executive leadership. This has also been a challenge for the organization to move away from being led by one of the original founders. Initially when the new leadership came in there were issues with lack of communication from them out to the rest of the org that led to bad feelings and discontent. I give the executive team credit for acknowledging the issue and addressing it head on. The level of transparency we have now with the executive team is more than I have seen in any previous company. I feel it is an exciting time to be at Kiva because there is a willingness to try new things and move in new directions in order to help more people.
Cons
Working for a nonprofit like Kiva means not earning as much as you could in a corporate setting.
