Kiva’s 2021 Annual Report illustrates growth and focus

Today, Kiva is releasing our 2021 Annual Report, which reflects the growth and reinvigorated focus on impact that our organization has been shaping over the past year. The report provides insights on Kiva’s financial performance, as well as a variety of impact stories from Kiva borrowers and partners. 2021 was a milestone year for our organization and we are excited to share our progress with the lenders, partners, investors, borrowers, and supporters that make up our Kiva community.

Access the 2021 Annual Report here

Fiscal year shift

Beginning in 2022, Kiva is converting to an industry-standard fiscal year calendar, which starts on July 1 and ends on June 30. Due to this shift, the 2021 990 return covers an extended period through June 30, 2022 and will be released when it is filed in November 2022. The 2021 Annual Report, released today, provides an overview of Kiva’s operations in 2021, including unaudited financials, and is meant to serve as a resource until the 990 is filed later this year.

2021 Annual Report letter from the CEO

Dear Kiva Community,

As I recently passed my one year anniversary with Kiva, I’m reminded of the purpose and passion that drew me to this organization. For over 16 years, Kiva has provided an incredible opportunity to directly help individuals, families, and businesses around the world with much needed access to capital.

Kiva’s work, and more specifically the people behind it, has led to extraordinary outcomes. Farmers have expanded their operations and provided employment opportunities to their communities; women have launched innovative businesses; students have pursued their education. When barriers to access to capital are removed, potential and opportunity are allowed to flourish.

2021 Milestones

2021 was a banner year for Kiva. Despite it being the second year of a global pandemic, our efforts continued to expand and positively impact even more lives. Our community enabled our biggest year ever with 550,000 borrowers across more than 60 countries receiving over $223 million worth of loans! That is a 76% increase on Kiva’s loan volume of $127 million in 2020.
I am grateful to all the partners, organizations, individuals, volunteers, lenders, and borrowers who have helped us reach these milestones.

In addition to our overall loan volume increase, in 2021, Kiva:

• began to modernize Kiva Marketplace and funded $156 million in loans, 21% more than in 2020
• continued to scale Kiva Capital, securing $134 million in committed assets, and deploying $67 million in loans
• added 13 new positions to our organization
• established an important DEI foundation for Kiva with organization-wide trainings, recruiting enhancements, an inclusion-focused committee, and more

Looking forward

Even after such a milestone year, ‘resting on our laurels’ is not in Kiva’s vocabulary. With nearly two decades of experience under our belt as an organization, we are looking toward the future with optimism and enthusiasm. We’re asking questions like “how can we most effectively expand our impact to reach even more lives?” This question is our central focus, helping to shape our next chapter.

This includes making difficult decisions to concentrate our efforts where we can achieve the most impact. In May 2022 we announced the sunset of Kiva Protocol. Launched in 2018, Kiva Protocol was an ambitious undertaking aimed at addressing systemic barriers to financial inclusion at national scale. After four years, extended implementation timelines coupled with delays caused by the COVID-19 pandemic pushed Kiva Protocol past our organizational scale and capacity.

Sunsetting Kiva Protocol allows us to concentrate our efforts to scale our investments in the lives of those around the world who need it most. We are doing that through Kiva Marketplace, our core crowdfunded microlending platform, and Kiva Capital, our institutional impact investing business. Marketplace and Capital are both focused on achieving our fundamental goal in 2022: increase our impact by enabling more lending to more underserved borrowers around the world.

The expansion of Kiva’s impact is made possible by our incredible community. Each of you have helped contribute to this milestone year and we are immensely grateful for your support. I look forward to continuing to build together. Thank you for being part of this movement.

– Chris