Micro-Loans for America’s Micro-Businesses

Posted: July 22nd, 2010 | Author: | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , | 12 Comments »

After my last post, I wondered what would happen if micro-loans were made available to America’s many micro-businesses, often owned by women. You know, the Mrs. Fields-in-the-making, the beauty shop owner, the food-cart operator, the mobile IT tech, the plumber or landscaper.  What would these entrepreneurs do if they had access to even the smallest amount of capital needed to launch their businesses?

Then I stumbled across an article posted yesterday by Newsweek talking about Grameen America—the new US subsidiary of the bank that invented micro-lending.  The fact is they are now participating in micro-lending right here on our turf!  According to the article, “nearly 8 percent of the U.S. population has no access to credit, and 18 percent has very little. This is the population Grameen aims to serve fueled by loans from institutions like Wells Fargo and Capital One.”

According to Red Kite’s favorite micro-lender, Kiva.org, many small businesses in the U.S. “lack access to traditional bank credit because their loan request is too small, their length of time in business is too short, or they operate in an industry that banks typically do not consider, such as home-based sales.”

The truth is a little bit CAN go a long way. Jumpstarting the littlest of businesses can change a woman, a family, a neighborhood, a community.  “I did it, so can you!” she says challenging her friends and neighbors to empower themselves.  Even at this level, micro-businesses have a bigger economic role to play in job creation and fueling the economy through increased business and consumer purchasing.  For example, the average Kiva-sponsored loan in the US contributes to the creation or retention of 2.4 jobs!

From our experience working with women-owned businesses, most women want to do what they love and truly believe in.  When that happens, positive results follow.  That’s why Red Kite is committed to helping women entrepreneurs. You can too.

Join Red Kite’s Kiva Team and help us reach our 2010 goal of raising $10,000! Our next loan will be to a woman entrepreneur right here in the U.S.  If you join our team, you’ll get regular updates on your borrower’s progress. And you’ll see how quickly the loan is repaid and how quickly you can get that money back in circulation to another borrower.  Best of all, it starts with just $25.

12 Comments on “Micro-Loans for America’s Micro-Businesses”

  1. 1 Lauri Olney said at 6:56 pm on July 22nd, 2010:

    With the way the economy of the world is today, this is where help is needed. The woman with good business sense (she has been balancing books, kids, and home for years) who wants to start a business doing what she loves! I agree, positive results will follow.

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  6. 6 Red Kite: Marketing to Women » Blog Archive » One of Oprah’s Ultimate Favorite Things™ for 2010 said at 9:46 pm on November 29th, 2010:

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  12. 12 Alex, no win no fee said at 8:03 am on March 15th, 2011:

    Well, ok, but I think that the focus of organisations that facilitate financing should be on revision of current processes for microfinance. They hardly can be called efficient. Just think, we have about 3 billion people — and it is close to half of the human population of the planet — who still live on less than $2 a day. And check this out, 2 thirds of them, which is two billion, remain absolutely “unbanked” – they don’t have any access to traditional financial systems. So the reach of the alliances in the industry must be much wider.

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