Kiva Iowa goes on the road

The Fairfield Colab was particularly crowded over the March 22 lunch hour. For months, local entrepreneurs had been gathering for Traction Thursday, a weekly networking program for members of the Fairfield business community. Today, however, there was some extra buzz.

Participants wanted to hear about Kiva Iowa.

Kaitlin Byers of NewBoCo, who serves as capital access manager for Kiva Iowa, came to Fairfield to spread the word about the microlending program. She did so at the invitation of Alex Taylor, managing director of Iowa Startup Accelerator Services.

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“Kiva is just one of the many accelerator services NewBoCo has, and we’re making an effort to share those services with communities across the state,” Taylor said. “We’re putting a big focus on rural communities for economic development because rural communities have a lot of underserved people that Kiva makes a natural fit for.

“The visibility of NewBoCo across the state has raised a lot of interest,” he said. “People are coming to see what we're doing. And they're excited.”

Answering questions

Byers said she was interested in seeing for herself what was happening in Fairfield, a south-central Iowa community with a large number of entrepreneurs and startup businesses despite its relatively small population of 5,000.

“Alex is always just exuberant and full of life when he's talking about Fairfield,” she said. “In that part of the state, it really seems like there's a lot of momentum and excitement around entrepreneurship and innovation.

“Although we’re headquartered in Cedar Rapids, I find that I have some of the best conversations and the best connections when I'm actually out on the road.”

The timing for making new connections is perfect for Kiva Iowa at this point. The program launched almost three years ago, in June 2021, with a funding campaign for Amidst magazine in Waterloo.

Since then, Kiva Iowa has successfully funded 73 loans worth almost $500,000.

Kiva is an international crowdfunding loan platform that was founded in 2005 in San Francisco.

Its mission is to “expand financial access to help underserved communities thrive,” through microloans funded by as little as $25 per lender. The loans are ideal for investing in new equipment, expanding to a new location or simply helping to get a new business off the ground.

Kiva impact

“Kiva’s impact has been tremendous,” Taylor said. “There are people who, without Kiva, would never have been able to get started because the barriers for entry for traditional loans are so much greater. Kiva provides enough flexibility for someone who might not qualify for a traditional loan, to get a cash infusion and be successful.”

Jen Hart, the owner and operator of Boba’s Bubble Tea in Eldridge, successfully funded a loan through Kiva in 2023. She was so happy with her experience that she’s currently working on a campaign for a second one, to help her business expand again. (See related story.)

Since 2021, Kiva Iowa has successfully funded loans in 24 cities throughout the state.

But Byers wants those numbers to grow. She points out that many people are still unaware of Kiva Iowa, not realizing what it is or how it could benefit their business.

“It sort of spreads like wildfire once you hit a certain community or group of entrepreneurs, and then they tell their network of friends and other business owners,” Byers said. “So I would love to be able to kind of take a look at the entire state and see where we haven’t been able to make that happen.”

One of those communities was Fairfield.

Starting conversations

Byers gave a half-hour presentation about the Kia Iowa program while in Fairfield. How to sign up. How it works. How loans get paid back. What a business needs in order to qualify.

Then she answered questions — lots of questions.

“I would have liked to stay another two hours to have conversations with everyone there,” Byers said. “I actually have had a number of people reach out and schedule time to chat. A couple individuals started an application.

“So that's really exciting. It felt like there was a really wide range of people across different industries. People kept asking, ‘Is this for me?’ And it was always great to be able to confirm that Kiva is for everyone.”

Looking back on the experience — and looking ahead to Kiva Iowa’s upcoming three-year anniversary — Byers said it’s a constant reminder of why she loves what she does.

“I've made a lot of wonderful new connections,” she said. “I've learned so much about not only new different types of businesses, but about different parts of the state, and about different experiences in the world of entrepreneurship.

“And it's really opened my eyes to a lot of wonderful people. I want them all to be super successful and take over the world. So that's why I keep going every day.”

To learn more about Kiva Iowa, visit https://newbo.co/kiva/

Rob Merritt is director of communications at NewBoCo. Comments: rob@newbo.co