Updated Terms of Use

We’re always busy making tweaks to the site to improve the user experience. This process has led to information about our updates and terms of use being scattered in different places across the site. To make it easier to find information about Kiva's programs and features, we’ve updated our Terms of Use to reflect Kiva’s growth and our dedication to making our site serve our lenders’ and borrowers’ needs.

The biggest update to our Terms of Use is to accommodate a new charitable giving option that will facilitate our work with institutional partners. This new entity is called the Kiva Donor-Advised Fund (DAF), and will give Kiva access to new loan capital from individuals, foundations and corporations, while allowing those partners to receive an upfront tax deduction when they transfer funds to Kiva for lending.

Like most capital on Kiva, the DAF funds will be recycled through multiple loans over a period of years and at the end of the contract can either be donated to Kiva or withdrawn and donated to another charity. The Kiva DAF is an innovative way to utilize philanthropic funds and can be reused many times over, multiplying the impact.

You’ll also find references to ‘1-click’ in the new Terms of Use. Recently we've begun testing this functionality to make it easier for people to engage with Kiva and (hopefully!) make lending and donating on Kiva smoother and more convenient. Not all of the updates relate directly to our website though. We introduced Kiva U last year and have received an enormous, enthusiastic response from students and educators.

Since students tend to be locally organized, Kiva U has lead to an increase in events held by students and lenders to engage with Kiva. The old Terms of Use never accounted for so many events being held for Kiva without Kiva support or supervision, so our Terms of use now includes a more detailed Events section. This new addition is a great celebration of how far Kiva has come since our last update, a year and a half ago.

This blog is intended to be a quick summary of some of the biggest updates contributing to the update to the Terms of Use, but you can read the new Terms of Use in its entirety here. Please note as with any change to Kiva’s Terms of Use, all updates and changes are highlighted in yellow.