Jonathan over at Smart Wealthy Rich wrote a post recently that received a great deal of positive feedback, questions, and pushback. His post, Dont Buy Me A Beer, Use That Money For Something Else instead talked about the benefits of donating to organizations like Kiva that offer a hand UP to budding entrepreneurs throughout the world through microloans that are funded by the public in $25 increments.

Some background on microloans aka, microcredit from Wikipedia:

Microcredit is the extension of very small loans (microloans) to the unemployed, to poor entrepreneurs and to others living in poverty who are not considered bankable. These individuals lack collateral, steady employment and a verifiable credit history and therefore cannot meet even the most minimal qualifications to gain access to traditional credit.

While most readers were supportive of Jonathans post, some offered questions, concerns and criticism about the idea of lending money to poor people in countries other than their own.

These are valid points that Id like to address further based on my own experience with donating to Kiva.

Question: Would it really help poor?

You can certainly donate money to someone with great intentions who had no idea how to use it. However, the entrepreneurs listed on Kiva have already proven successful in starting a business and now need money to grow their business. Each person has been through a review process.

Kiva works with field partners like MIFEX, a savings and loan corporation that offers special services and business growth educational programs for the poor.

Question: What if theyre ignorant of these loans?

I’m assuming this means, ‘what if they don’t know how to spend this money wisely?’ Each person Kiva profiles knows exactly how they will spend their money in order to grow their business.

For example, one person that I sponsored, Lidys Fajardo from Ecuador, needed the $600 loan to purchase new supplies for the salon that pays for the education of her 5 children.

Lidys runs a hair salon where she styles and cuts hair. She has been in this line of work for over 15 years. After working in the beauty salon of a family member, Lidy’s decided to start her own operation with $50 of capital. She opens her salon at 9 in the morning and works until about 8 p.m. She needs the loan in order to buy better equipment for her operation. She needs new scissors, a blow dryer and a hair iron.

Lidys is a 34 year old mother of 5 children. All of her kids are in school thanks to the income she generates from her own salon. She hopes to continue to improve her services and attract a larger amount of clients.

Question: How long before they repay?

If you were to take out a loan that would greatly improve your business, how long do you assume the terms of the repayment would be? Most ‘small’ loans in the US are paid back over 3-5 years. However, I’m seeing a much faster rate of payback with Kiva.

I donated $25 to Lidys back in December and now 7 months later she has repaid 75% of her $600 loan.

Another entrepreneur that I donated $25 to in December named Akouvi Adry has repaid 50% of the $800 loan she needed to strengthen her clothing trade and will allow her to add to her shoes and bags for ladies inventory.

Question: I think the idea of sponsoring a budding entrepreneur is a great idea. But, what about sponsoring one near home?

Good point. I suppose that this depends on where you consider home and where you draw the line between us and them. Where is close to home? Is it your neighborhood, your state, your country, or your world? There are lots of ways to support companies closer to home by choosing to spend your money at small businesses in your neighborhood or buying products online from smaller companies instead of Amazon.

Kiva allows you to help entrepreneurs in impoverished countries that you would have no access to otherwise.

Would you spend $25 to fund the business dream of someone in another country that you’d never met and probably never will? Why or why not?

Get Your Structure Right!
I can’t tell you the amount of times I have heard and said that!
To have a successful AdWords Campaign you must have them structured properly. First make sure you have a Standard Edition NOT a starter edition. The Standard Edition gives you much more control and better functionality. And don’t worry, it’s not any harder to navigate and edit.
Each campaign should have its individual:
1. Daily Budget
2. Language Targeting
3. Location Targeting
4. Ad distribution preference
5. Start and end dates
Each Ad Group for each Campaign should have its individual:
1. Set of keywords that are relevant to each other.
2. Relevant Ad’s/Ad creative/Ad Copy for the keywords selected

If you have key words that have high CTR% ideally you should break those high performers into their own ad group so the entire ad group has the highest CTR% instead of being brought down by the other low performers. And even full campaign if you so choose. DON’T FORGET to use the “Copy or Move Keywords and Ad Text” tool to rearrange things if there is any positive history for the keywords and Ad’s.

Action speaks louder than words but not nearly as often.  Mark Twain

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