San Francisco Mayor Drops By Kiva HQ

Kiva welcomed San Francisco Mayor Edwin Lee to headquarters last week to discuss city policies, football and, most importantly, to celebrate the growing relationship between Kiva and the City of San Francisco.

In October, San Francisco became the first municipal Kiva Zip trustee in the country. This partnership allows the city to identify and endorse the smallest of small businesses, who are often overlooked by traditional municipal Small Business Bureaus, for loans up to $5,000 with 0% interest.

Even the smallest business is invaluable to the community, providing jobs, access and reliability to the area. San Francisco showed its commitment to small businesses by becoming a Kiva Zip trustee, but you don’t have to run a city to be part of this important work. Trustees come in a variety of forms including: economic development organizations, community-based organizations, local businesses and even individuals. Kiva has also partnered with district supervisors in San Francisco who can endorse entrepreneurs in their districts. Supervisor Mark Farrell has already endorsed two entrepreneurs in his district who have fully funded on Kiva Zip and is eager to use his network to help small business owners in his neighborhood.

Last year across the U.S., Kiva Zip connected over 15,000 lenders to support 410 entrepreneurs with over $1.6 million. Support from cities like San Francisco will help us reach even more borrowers.

If you are an entrepreneur that could benefit from the Kiva Zip program please visit us at zip.kiva.org/borrow

If you know of an entrepreneur please contact us at contactzip@kiva.org

To learn about the work Kiva Zip has done in San Francisco check out this impact summary


Kiva warmly welcomes the Mayor of San Francisco, who addressed the office and expressed his excitement to be working with Kiva to empower the small businessmen and women of San Francisco