Kiva, led by 2008 Skoll social entrepreneurs Matt Flannery and Premal Shah, just had its 4th birthday.  They celebrated with a pretty cool accomplishment - surpassing the $100 million level in loans.  As of today, Kiva has raised $100,786,510, enjoys a 98 percent repayment rate, has funded 251,001 entrepreneurs, and has 587,616 lenders representing 185 countries (Kiva has a great set of metrics that allows you to track activities in real time.)  Not bad for a 4 year old.

Skoll has had multiple touch points - direct and indirect - with Kiva throughout its young life.  Kiva is a great example of an organization that has benefited from both the ecosystem work and the direct support the Foundation undertakes.  Matt Flannery starting blogging on the Skoll Foundation’s community site, Social Edge, in October 2005, right when he launched Kiva.  In October 2006, Kiva, which had been struggling to gain traction, got a huge lift when Frontline World ran a story on the organization’s work in Uganda as part of its series on social entrepreneurs, work funded by Skoll.  (You can read Matt’s blog entry about the impact of the broadcast here.)  Also in 2006, Matt was selected as one of the participants in Santa Clara University’s Global Social Benefit Incubator (GSBI), an annual mentoring-based program to help a handful of promising emerging social entrepreneurs from around the globe scale their programs and connect to resources.  GSBI is supported by the Foundation.  Finally, in 2008, Matt and Premal received the Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship.

It’s been great to work so closely with such impressive leaders and such a great organization.  We look forward to the next four years!