Kiva reviews

4.2

95% would recommend to a friend

(110 total reviews)
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Vishal Ghotge

100% approve of CEO

60% positive business outlook

Kiva has an employee rating of 4.2 out of 5 stars, based on 110 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have an excellent working experience there. The Kiva employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the Financial Services industry (3.7 stars).

Reviews by job title

110 reviews
1.0
Jul 23, 2019
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

-- Kiva used to be an amazing place to work -- incredible team, warm culture, passionate about the "old" mission: "Connecting people through lending to alleviate poverty". -- Strong brand.

Cons

-- The founder stepped away as CEO a few years ago. After a long transition period, another CEO was appointed by the board, but lasted less than 2 years. Then there was another long transition period, and then another new CEO was appointed. The new CEO has no non-profit experience. And the board did not really consult existing employees before making the appointment (again). So there has been a lot of CEO transition, with the accompanying disruption and lack of clarity. -- More importantly, the new CEO has destroyed the culture of Kiva, and misunderstood what was special about Kiva's business. He changed Kiva's mission to remove the part about "connecting people", which was Kiva's unique selling point. And he objected to one of Kiva's values being "Respect". Literally half the staff has turned over since the new CEO arrived. -- After all the radical shake-ups, strategy changes and mission update, growth dropped in 2018 vs. 2017. I guess this is what happens when all the staff leave.

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Kiva Response
6y
Thanks for your feedback. I’m sorry that as a valued alumni you aren’t as excited as I am about Kiva’s new mission to expand financial access to help underserved communities thrive. We definitely do this through kiva.org the platform that does connect borrowers and lenders as well as other new impact lines that will allow us to serve even more people globally. Thanks for the contributions that you made to Kiva during your long tenure and I wish you the best.
3.0
Sep 17, 2018

Not what it used to be

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

There was no place like Kiva. Best team, culture, passion, talent out there. People deeply cared about making the world a better place and were doing everything possible to make that happen. You woke up excited to go to work because your coworkers were your family, and you were all in it together to truly change lives. There was absolutely no better work environment out there! Everyone wanted to work for Kiva, and you felt deeply appreciative if you were one of the "lucky" ones who landed a job. The salary was low, but you knew that working for a nonprofit, and everyone was okay with it because the culture and outstanding benefits made up for the difference in salary that you could be making at a for-profit in the Bay Area.

Cons

The new CEO has sadly changed everything. Rather than recognizing that the problem was with a lack of strategic direction from management, the CEO blamed all problems on staff. He is bringing in tons of people from the outside with no input from the current team and taking away responsibilities from current talented staff, giving all new projects to outside contractors. He claims "new" ideas as his own instead of recognizing that lower level staff have been working on these ideas for years and just never had management give them the green light to make them happen. The new exec team is largely very corporate and doesn't show signs that they are authentically there for the mission. It is run like any other tech company now and focused on technology, technology, technology instead of the mission (if people wanted to work for the latest technology, they could make 2x the salary at basically any other company in the Bay Area, so this is ridiculous). There is no input from the staff and existing Kiva users on how things can improve. Instead, it's the "we need to revamp everything" approach in order to be more like Amazon, Facebook, etc. Half the staff has turned over in the last ~12 months. Terrible morale that is not acknowledged by the exec team despite constant attempts to get them to talk about it. All people that are still there that aren't recent hires are looking for new jobs.

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Kiva Response
7y
While it is difficult to hear, thanks for your candor. I care deeply about the team and would welcome the chance to hear from you directly. While I am a new member of the Executive Leadership Team, I am interested to hear your thoughts. I want us to strike the right balance of non profit and technology in order to alleviate poverty. Please don't hesitate to reach out to me via email to schedule a time to chat. pam@kiva.org
1.0
Mar 14, 2019

Cocky leadership team

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Kiva is an amazing organization with a great mission and vision; not to mention its impact. High calibre of talented colleagues all over the world Great location and office

Cons

The 'new' CEO and the leadership team are incredibly cocky. They are in a tearing hurry to get rid of everything that is 'old' instead of honoring it and building on it. This has led to deep discontent within the organization, that has led many to question what is valued around here (despite our new values).

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Kiva Response
7y
Thanks for your review. I'm truly sorry that you experience the new leadership team as being cocky. I'd love to learn more from you directly about what you are experiencing. What I know is that this team is deeply committed to creating a financially inclusive world and is working quite hard to create it and we absolutely need an inspired and engaged team to make the biggest impact. Please reach out to me to share directly how we can be even more effective. I'd love to hear. pam@kiva.org
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Glassdoor has 229 Kiva reviews submitted anonymously by Kiva employees. Read employee reviews and ratings on Glassdoor to decide if Kiva is right for you.