At the Skoll World Forum in Oxford, during a panel discussion, the idea of collaboration between the "giants" on the panel (ie., Kiva, MyC4) was debated. In the end, it was decided that collaboration would be a good thing, but the individual entities needed first to establish their "dominance" before they could sacrifice the "bandwith" (ie, financial and human resources) to undertake such collaboration.

Social Actions' Founder, Peter Deitz, created Social Actions with a vision of breaking down the "silos" that currently exist in the space. It is in that spirit that I present this humble application for my very humble platform.

I believe that it is in our best interests as social actions platforms to collaborate. I also believe that collaborating is the ONLY way we will be successful in the end - and that this is especially true for the microlending platforms. Our websites ask people to pitch in small amounts of money to collectively move efforts forward. We are based on the concepts of working together; collaborating with others for the common good and a shared goal. As such, it seems odd that sites encouraging their users to collaborate and build a loan together would be looking toward establishing individual dominance. It is contradictory.

I wholeheartedly understand the concern for using program resources wisely, and focusing on establishing sustainability and continued growth. However, I believe with the Social Actions API and a little creativity, the platforms can collaborate very easily, without hardly lifting a finger.

This widget will present to lenders on my site other ways that they can take action through microlending. Many of the Lend4Health'ers I speak to are not familiar with Kiva, nor with Wokai. This widget can easily change that. After completing a loan transaction, they will land on a page that thanks them for their loan, gives them basic information about what is to come, and then essentially says, "Hey! Isn't microlending cool? Look at these other sites where you can do the same kind of thing!"  

My hope is that I will be able to help Kiva and Wokai gain new lenders, or at least help them increase their brand visibility. I think it would be incredible if a lender could make a $25 loan on Lend4Health and then click over to Kiva and be moved to make another $25 loan for an entrepreneur in a developing country. If this widget can do that, I would like to think it is one (very easy) way for me to kind of have a "double bottom line."  

It is important to note that this widget will not negatively impact the number of loans made on Lend4Health because these other opportunities will be presented to the lender AFTER they have already made a loan on Lend4Health.

I invite Wokai and Kiva to embed similar widgets on their landing pages. A few lines of code and a few minutes of cutting and pasting can enable all of the Social Actions microlending platforms to collaborate, almost effortlessly and very cost-effectively.

Thank you for considering this submission. :)

Tori Tuncan, Founder, Lend4Health