Kiva reviews

-Excess grace (too nice, need "tough love" / radical honesty / glassdoor reviews) -Soft-minded (kind of like leaving notes on the board) -Poor Communication (from mgmt about about any major decision) -Ambiguous (about whether we believe in our values) -Resistance to change/new (fear)(of poor leadership) -Lost of trust in leadership (to say the least)

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.