Business and Management Studies - Microfinance

What fascinates me about microfinance is the fact that

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it's a sustainable way of helping

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low income, marginalised and vulnerable communities,

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and we think the ultimate thing that we’re trying to do through

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microfinance and the Lendwithcare project,

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is to make people more financially independent, more self-reliant.

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In the longer term, I think that's the only real solution

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to poverty.

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Lendwithcare is a microfinance crowdfunding platform.

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So, what it does essentially is that it attracts support

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from thousands of people in the UK, mostly,

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although we have lots of people based in other countries as well.

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They see the profile of somebody with a small business

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somewhere around the world with an idea that they want to develop

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and they say, I want to support that.

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So they go onto the website, they make a loan.

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Once the loan is fully funded, we collect the money

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and we transfer it to a local partner organisation overseas.

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They're the ones who will have

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appraised the loan application of the person.

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Hopefully it's successful and they repay the money

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and it goes back eventually to your account as well as a lender in the UK.

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Myself and my colleagues, we

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came into contact with Lendwithcare

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when they were relatively newly established

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and we worked with them over a period of several years to help them

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look at how they were presenting entrepreneur profiles,

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how they were setting up their website

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to encourage people to contribute.

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The research I specifically lead, I was really interested in looking

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at how contributors on the Lendwithcare platform behave.

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When you sign up to the Lendwithcare website,

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you create a profile, if you wish,

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and you can tell people about who you are and why you lend.

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A lot of the ones I was reading were quite

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keen to kind of emphasize what good people they were.

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You know, they'd have photos of themselves

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climbing Everest and then you had other people

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who just were kind of anonymous and I think very deliberately so.

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And I was really interested in looking at

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whether there was any difference in the behaviors between these people.

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Economic theory

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kind of suggests that one reason why people might give to charity

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is to enhance their reputation or their image.

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So I was working on the assumption that people who create these

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kind of outlandish profiles of themselves

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possibly had more of an image concern

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than those who decided to contribute anonymously.

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So given that the number of campaigns is visible,

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but the amount of money given is not visible,

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I hypothesised that people who are more image concerned

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would want to give a greater number of loans,

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but would give smaller amounts to each one to kind of maximise the

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image they were presenting.

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And that's exactly what we found.

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So that helped inform Lendwithcare about the type of lenders

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they're working with

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and the incentives

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and the motivations that are driving their behaviours.

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We've made recommendations to them

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about how they could better engage and incentivise that kind of thing.

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It's just good to be able

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to understand that

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and to get a better insight into how you can encourage

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these types of contributors to give more money.

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Well, I think from the perspective of Lendwithcare,

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the process was that they were doing a lot of work

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internationally in developing countries

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but weren't really getting a sense of

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whether what they were doing was making any real difference to people.

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I think they were getting a lot of questions

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from their contributors about, you know, how their money was being used

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and how it was affecting the lives of entrepreneurs.

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So Lendwithcare were quite keen to get independent

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academic assessment of just how much impact these loans

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were actually having to entrepreneurs, both to help sort of present

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evidence to the public and to CARE International.

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But I think also so they could get a sense of the power behind

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what they were doing and how it was,

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you know, really making a difference and changing people's lives.

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We've recently begun a partnership this year

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with an organization called Doselva, which is based in Nicaragua.

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So what essentially Doselva does is it helps smallholder farmers

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to cultivate high value organic spices.

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A hectare of maize, for example,

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which is kind of the most traditional crops in Central America,

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you might get about $290 per hectare.

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You start producing things like turmeric and it's $1900 per hectare,

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and then you start producing ginger, which is $2800 per hectare.

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So suddenly your level of profit per farmer

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has increased by sixfold,

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once you've taken out the costs of production.

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These crops,

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they can be grown in conjunction with the existing forest canopy.

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So you don't need to chop down trees.

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In areas that are particularly sensitive to deforestation

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or on the buffer zones of protected biosphere

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parks, these are the crops that are ideally suited.

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I recently spoke with the CEO of Doselva, our partner

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in Nicaragua, and I said, “This is such a wonderful idea.

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It makes so much economic sense, it makes so much environmental sense.

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Why couldn't you get it going?”

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And he said, “Look, it's such an innovative project

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that nobody would take the risk in financing us.

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With Lendwithcares funding, this project

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simply wouldn't have been possible but you've been prepared to take

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the risk and fund us.”

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And I think one of the reasons that we took that risk is

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because we have the flexibility.

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Our lenders, the thousands of people that support Lendwithcare,

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actively want us to do this sort of work

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because it's the sort of project that makes the most sense.

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The next phase of Lendwithcare is that we want to roll out the research

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to other countries.

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Every country where we work is different and what we want to do really:

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to better help the people that we want to help,

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we better need to understand the challenges that they face.

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Lendwithcare and the University of Portsmouth

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have been in a long term partnership for about seven years now,

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and it's been a relationship that I think we've benefited

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tremendously from.

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The collaboration has enabled us to produce high level,

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scientific, independent evidence

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and address the fundamental question,

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“What impact is Lendwithcare having on the people that we support?”

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We've been involved in this period of quite rapid expansion

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with Lendwithcare,

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and I'd like to think a lot of the recommendations and insights

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we've offered them in terms of

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how to reach out to the public, how to engage them more effectively.

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We've made a significant impact on how they've been able

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to grow and develop over that time.

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Neither we at Lendwithcare or our partners

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have the expertise of the University of Portsmouth,

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so that's where the assistance is so vital.