February 17, 2009 | Read Time: 2 minutes
Kiva uses the Internet to match entrepreneurs in developing countries with people who want to loan them money to build their businesses. Now the San Francisco charity is asking programmers to develop new online applications to further promote its microfinance mission.
The group has created an open-application programming interface –- API for short –- through which computer programmers can request public data about Kiva’s work, which is delivered with “computer-friendly markup” that makes it easy to integrate the information into new applications.
For technology to fulfill its promise in bolstering the spread of microfinance, it “is going to take a lot of innovation, a lot of creativity, and a lot of passionate people bringing the opportunity of loans to places they’ve never been,” Skylar Woodward, the lead engineer on the new interface, writes on Build.Kiva, the new Kiva API’s Web site. “Because we believe in the power of you as a part of this open and transparent community we are opening our digital doors today and asking you to help us change the world with loans.”
Mr. Woodward explains that through the new API, programmers could request information on things like, all of the loans for which Kiva is currently raising funds, entrepreneurs in Uganda who have fully repaid their loans, and the most recent lending activity on the Kiva Web site.
Kiva is keeping a running list of ideas for tools that programmers could develop using the new API.
Among the possible projects: Applications that would allow people to find or monitor loans on their mobile devices, an alert service that would notify potential lenders when a certain kind of loan opportunity becomes available on the site, or a map that shows the transfer of funds through Kiva around the world.
What do you think of the idea? Are there other ways that nonprofit organizations could use APIs in their work?
