Here’s a good last-minute gift idea for socially conscious friends – a $20 gift certificate to MicroPlace, which provides loans to low-income entrepreneurs. They have a B1G1 holiday promotion where if you buy a $20 GC, you get another $20 to send to the person of your choice for free (could be you if you wanted). Ends December 31st.
The cool thing about this gift is that you’re not just giving $20 to some charity “in their name” that they’ll never see. They get to help out a poor borrower, then then when the loan matures they get $20 + any interest! Your friend can then spend it however they wish (thus making it better than some Best Buy gift card), or reinvest in another microcredit fund. Thus the whole “gifts that keeps on giving” slogan. And you get $40 for spending $20!
Give a Gift that Keeps on Giving
Give a unique and special gift this holiday season. It is a gift of connection, a gift of hope, and a gift that believes that poor people can use their ingenuity and hard work to break out of the cycle of poverty.Your gift can help fund loans to poor people who could start a business, save, and work their way out of poverty. And when you purchase a gift certificate of $20 or more on MicroPlace, we’ll give you a free gift certificate of $20 to send to someone else on your shopping list!
I now have over $2,000 invested at MicroPlace and also $2,000 invested at LendingClub (P2P Lending).
The Best Credit Card Bonus Offers – November 2024
Big List of Free Stocks from Brokerage Apps
Best Interest Rates on Cash - November 2024
Free Credit Scores x 3 + Free Credit Monitoring
Best No Fee 0% APR Balance Transfer Offers
Little-Known Cellular Data Plans That Can Save Big Money
How To Haggle Your Cable or Direct TV Bill
Big List of Free Consumer Data Reports (Credit, Rent, Work)
Apparently you can not buy in from Pennsylvania and because I was charged for the gift thing before i was asked to go through the full registration I am out 20 bucks and a friend of mine just got a lame donation in her name instead of an investment she would have loved to expand upon.
I wrote to them but it is buried there in their prospectus.
buyer beware and read the fine print
Hi Aaron,
I’m Dana Schmidt from MicroPlace. We’re sorry you had a less than satisfying experience on our site. Nobody is more frustrated with these state restrictions than us! But, I would like to clarify that in addition to the prospectus, the list of state restrictions is included right below the box where you input the dollar amount you’d like to gift. That said, we’re in the process of finalizing some featues to improve the user experience:
1) we’re going to add the list of restricted states to the gifting home page as well as a reminder on the page where you provide us your recipient details, and 2) we’re going to permit the recipient to select another investment if they can’t or don’t wish to invest in the cause chosen by the giver. We’re still researching the development work, but given the huge popularity of the gift program, this is important! We will of course alert recipients of unredeemed gift certificates of any such new features.
In the meantime, as you say, while donations don’t provide the whole cool experience of investing your gift again and again, the proceeds are used to enable loans to help others help themselves, and after all, that’s the effort we’re all trying to support!
Thanks for this! I now have $440 at MicroPlace. My first $100 matured today and I’ve reinvested it.