E Pluribus Unum

Andrea Seabrook is being honored as a Champion of Change for her accomplishments as a crowdfunding pioneer.

Among the most inspiring facets of the American experiment is our belief in the power of individuals, banding together for the collective good. “We, The People” power our democracy, build our communities, and choose our future. Crowdfunding is the next logical extension of that most American of values. That is why I chose to crowdfund DecodeDC, my new public radio show and podcast, using Kickstarter.

Crowdfunding is more than just a new way to start a business. It’s a way to start a movement. When you appeal directly to people, and they contribute their hard-earned money to your project, you are building an audience that is truly invested in your work, both literally and figuratively. And that, I believe, is exactly what journalism needs right now.

After years of covering politics and government, I have come to believe that Washington is broken, and the way the media covers it is partly to blame. Our institutions seem to produce the exact opposite of their intended purpose: Campaigns narrow choices. Advocacy blocks progress. Elections protect politicians. But news outlets continue to cover these things as if they were functioning well.

DecodeDC covers Washington differently. We approach the problems with stark honesty and fierce independence. We ask why politics is broken, and search for answers. We try to be the eyes and ears of our listeners, wondering about the state of our democracy. It is what I deeply believe our society needs right now, and it is what our audience and funders demand.

Crowdfunding works. My audience was generous and I raised more money than I thought was possible using crowdfunding. But I also gained much more than that—I made myself and DecodeDC directly accountable to our listeners; exactly the people a journalist should be accountable to.

Andrea Seabrook is Host and Founder of DecodeDC.

Crowdfunding Microloans for Social Good

Premal Shah is being honored as a Champion of Change for his accomplishments as a crowdfunding pioneer.

How can we leverage crowdfunding to create abundance where there is scarcity? How do we give everyone a way to consistently be their best selves, including maximizing their potential to do good for others? The capacity and will is there, we see it when our country and the world comes together to assist after major disasters. How can that hope, compassion, and connection—that fundamental understanding that we are a human family—continue to flow long after disasters, and help to build a sustainable economic recovery for all of us?

Those are some of the guiding questions we ask ourselves everyday at Kiva.org.

Almost eight years ago, Kiva launched a global experiment to crowdfund microloans to help alleviate poverty and expand economic opportunity. We leveraged every new technology we could get our hands on to bring crowdfunding and microlending into the mainstream.

Today, more than one million budding small business entrepreneurs in 30 U.S. cities and 65 countries have received loans crowdfunded on Kiva.org. In total, more than $440 million in loans have been crowdfunded by a global community of 940,000 people lending $25 at a time to the entrepreneur of their choice. And with a 98% repayment rate, the money you lend is truly a loan, not a donation—proof of a compelling mission and a sustainable model.

Kiva Zip is a new innovation from Kiva poised to dramatically expand access to small business microloans in the U.S. by leveraging new technologies and the power of crowdfunding. Kiva Zip aims to reach entrepreneurs who are locked out of traditional loan programs and entrepreneurs using their small businesses to advance social good in their communities.

Small businesses are the cornerstone of the nation’s economy and a stepping stone to the American Dream. According to the U.S. Small Business Administration, they represent more than 99% of all businesses in the country and create two out of every three net new jobs. Despite the economic power of small businesses, the credit freeze of 2008 has not thawed for the smallest of small businesses. Small business owners and budding entrepreneurs are denied loans for any number of reasons: the loan amount they seek is too small, their business is too young, their plan is too innovative, or their credit history is too short or damaged.  What they do have is the passion, plan and people in their community who know and trust them.

The lending institutions built to assist them are struggling to meet demand. There are just 400 microlending organizations in the U.S., with only 2% of potential small business owners being served. However, there are millions of community groups, religious communities, and individuals with deep community ties, who can transform social capital into financial capital on Kiva Zip.

Through Kiva Zip, these groups do not have to create their own loan programs. Instead, they can become Kiva Zip Trustees and vouch for the small business owners and budding entrepreneurs who they know and trust. Once endorsed, entrepreneurs can post their profile and begin getting their 0% interest loan crowdfunded by friends, neighbors, and Kiva’s global community of lenders. 

Over time, successful Kiva Zip borrowers are themselves becoming Trustees, endorsing other aspiring entrepreneurs who they trust in their community. As these trust networks virally spread, the reach of Kiva Zip’s 0% interest, crowdfunded capital can dramatically expand the availability of microloans in the U.S. 

Operating for just one year in pilot phase, Kiva Zip is already opening doors to opportunity for hundreds of small business owners and aspiring entrepreneurs across the country. Over 150 organizations and individuals in 30 states have become Trustees, including the Institute for Veterans and Military Families in New York and the City of Oakland in California.

More than half the U.S. loans crowdfunded on Kiva Zip are to entrepreneurs in their first year of operation, and about one-third have been startups. These entrepreneurs have been financially excluded or are creating a positive social impact in their neighborhoods and communities—exactly the types of businesses that can help create a sustainable economic recovery consisting of local jobs.

Today, seven out of ten small businesses’ loans are rejected by traditional lenders, but with access to crowdfunded “gap financing” from the internet community, many more of these businesses will be able to survive, create jobs, and ultimately qualify for loans from traditional lenders as their businesses succeed.

The crowdfunding movement has proven that when traditional lenders step back, millions of everyday people are willing to step up to become “Champions of Change” in their own communities.

Premal Shah is President and Co-Founder of Kiva.org.

A Passion for Life-Saving Innovation

Amar Sawhney is being honored as a Champion of Change for his accomplishments as an immigrant entrepreneur and innovator.

I find myself today where I am through a series of happy accidents and some deliberate decisions.  I really enjoy what I do, which is innovate in the field of medical devices and biopharmaceuticals, by using my education as a chemical engineer specializing in biomaterials.  I look back today in satisfaction at having helped create several medical devices that are helping millions of patients.  However, how I ended up here was far from a sure thing.  In fact, being an immigrant created roadblocks early on in my career, that in a strange way helped propel me in a direction that I otherwise may never have taken, had things come easier to me.

I came to the United States in 1987 from India to pursue my graduate studies in Chemical Engineering at the University of Texas.  Unlike many immigrants, I was not fleeing persecution or economic stagnation.  I had a good job in hand in India, so selecting the United States for graduate studies was a deliberate choice that I made to explore a new country and get a great education.  I proceeded to get my Master’s degree and looked for a job through campus placement.  I applied to 30 positions and within a month was looking at 30 rejection letters, all because I lacked a green card.  This was a shock to me, as I had never encountered such abject failure in the past! 

The safe thing would have been to go back to India where I could surely get a job, but seeing as I liked research, I decided to double down and get my Ph.D.  This turned out to be a seminal move, as my academic advisor and I invented some very cool technology.  We invented methods to do super fast chemical reactions to build materials on living cells and tissues, without harming them in the least bit.  This opened up some wide new horizons for the field of tissue engineering. We were approached by a California-based venture capital fund that wanted to start a company using our technology.  I remember thinking then that only in the United States would someone funnel millions of dollars into the idea and dreams of a 25-year-old kid!

This and other technology I have been fortunate enough to invent with my team members went on to have major impact.  We created the first sealants for lung surgery, brain surgery, and spine surgery, and other sealants for vascular and cardiac interventions.  This technology is helping improve outcomes of lung and breast biopsies, decrease scar formation post-surgery, decrease radiation toxicity to healthy organs following cancer radiotherapy, create drug delivery systems for ophthalmology, treat people with abdominal aneurysms, and more. The applications seem to be endless and we are continuing to eagerly solve new challenges each day. 

Early on, I realized that to most fully deploy the technology, scalability would be needed.  There was no way to do all the things one wished to do, without creating some sort of a platform for entrepreneurship.  My business partner and mentor, Fred Khosravi, and I decided to form Incept, an organization that would enable entrepreneurship.  This was not the typical incubator.  We felt that money and space were commodities, while what entrepreneurs really needed was “intellectual capital.” This sometimes meant technology and sometimes meant business expertise.  We have since worked with several bright and hardworking colleagues, and now Incept has created more than a dozen companies and continues to launch at least one new company every year.  Incept companies tackle challenges from sales and marketing analytics, to devices that filter blood clots during cardiac stenting, to heart valves that can be replaced without open surgery. 

More importantly, we have ended up creating a community of people that include other entrepreneurs, employees, physicians, and service providers who we love working with and who share our values.  We subscribe to a value system that places solving significant medical needs at the apex, working with good people next, and finally hopes to realize economic value too.  We are careful not to ever invert this value system, which could corrupt our actions. 

I feel humbled and privileged to have the opportunity to do what I do.  I realize that nowhere else in the world would I have been able to launch into an entrepreneurial career, the way that I did, except in the United States. 

Amar Sawhney is President and CEO of Ocular Therapeutix.