The Hannah Grimes Center for Entrepreneurship announces that Program Director Jake Nonweiler is now a Kiva Small Business Advisor. Nonweiler will advise entrepreneurs interested in securing funding through Kiva and support them through the application and fundraising process. Kiva provides crowdfunded microloans to small business owners and aspiring entrepreneurs.
Kiva provides a link between small businesses who need money and ordinary people who would like to lend even small amounts of money to help support job creation and economic growth. Small businesses can access loans up to $10,000 with no interest and no fees.
Anyone interested in supporting local small businesses can become a lender with an interest-free loan of $25 or more by visiting Kiva.org and choosing an entrepreneur to support. These individual loans are aggregated until the borrower’s full loan request is “crowdfunded.” Over time, the business pays back the loan and the investor can decide to take their money out or reinvest in another business.
“We are thrilled by the opportunity to provide such a valuable and typically inaccessible level of capital to starting entrepreneurs in the area,” said Nonweiler. “We are working hard to find ways to help entrepreneurs take educated, calculated risks and feel confident that this relationship with Kiva is one way of doing so.”
Crowdfunded loans fill a critical financing gap faced by entrepreneurs with businesses that are too young, too small or too innovative to receive loans from traditional lenders. Traditional lenders reject 80% of small business loan applications. However, more than 90 percent of loan requests on Kiva are fully funded — rare among crowdfunding sites.
Across the country Kiva has connected thousands of small dollar lenders to thousands of local entrepreneurs, including businesses owned by immigrants, neighborhood shops working to stay in their community, and businesses founded to hire at-risk youth or to support local food ecosystems. Kiva’s community of 1.4 million lenders have crowdfunded $850 million in loans — $25 at a time — to more than 1.9 million entrepreneurs in 84 countries and 47 U.S. states. The repayment rate is 98%.
To learn more, contact Jake Nonweiler at 603-352-5063 or financing@hannahgrimes.com.
Hannah Grimes Center Program Director is Now a Kiva Small Business Advisor
