Below is the full text of the email that Wokai sent out today (also is currently on their home page):

Dear Wokai Contributors,

We regret to tell you that we are starting the process of winding down Wokai and concluding operations.

Wokai has been actively searching for a new CEO to take the organization to the next level in China. However, as of our application deadline, no clear candidate came to the fore. In addition, we have met unexpected funding road blocks, which have left us without the reserves necessary to extend the search further.

Considering Wokai’s current situation, our Board of Directors has unanimously decided to take the resources that we currently have and wind down Wokai’s operations. This approach will ensure that all of the resources that we have built up are used to continue our mission of growing microfinance in China.

Over the last 5 years since starting Wokai and 3.5 years since the launch of our website, our team and global supporter community has raised over a half a million dollars in loan capital for micro-entrepreneurs living under the poverty line in China. We’ve worked together to fund over 1,500 micro-loans to 961 borrowers, all at an over 98% on-time repayment rate. When you take into account the families of our micro-entrepreneurs, these funds have supported over 4,000 people to start the process of moving out of poverty. Not only have we directly impacted the lives of these individuals, but our over 30 major media features in the likes of CNN, Bloomberg, MSNBC, Phoenix TV, and China Newsweek and our global volunteer community of over 300 volunteers in 20 cities around the world has brought our cause of growing microfinance in China onto the global radar.

Moving forward, our Field Partners have committed to use the loan capital contributed to date to provide a continuous cycle of new loans to micro-entreprenuers in China’s rural Sichuan and Inner Mongolia Provinces. With this commitment, over the next ten years, over 9,000 micro-entrepreneurs should have the opportunity to lift themselves, their families, and communities out of poverty.

I cannot thank you enough for all of your support. Even as Wokai winds down, the legacy that we’ve built together will continue on, empowering a generation of micro-entrepreneurs to achieve their dreams and laying the groundwork for the future growth of microfinance in China.

Sincerely,

Casey Wilson
Co-founder & CEO, Wokai

I’m beyond impressed with what Casey and the entire Wokai team has accomplished in just 5 short years; they’ve put China on the microfinance radar in a massive way. I truly hope this announcement prompts someone to come out of the woodwork and keep Wokai going, both in terms of funding and running the organization going forward – I’d love to see the organization progress and continue to touch the lives of those in China.

I just took a look at Wokai — and noticed they’ve completed a brand new website redesign sometime in the past week or two.

Custom websites are what I do for a living, and I’m certainly impressed with the result they came up with. I’m willing to bet that this site will convert web traffic to dollars raised at a much higher clip than their old site did. The design is nice and clean, and the home page it totally devoted to their desired user action of funding an entrepreneur in China. It’s obvious they’ve done extensive user research, some A/B testing, and/or have someone very capable on their team who oversaw this redesign.

Congrats to the team for the successful launch!

Here’s an interview with Casey Wilson, the Co-Founder of Wokai.org in China:

I received this email from Wokai yesterday:

Uploaded with Skitch!

A wokai tshirt for earning “impact points”. SMART. When I get my shirt in the mail, Wokai will have just turned me into a walking billboard.

Would I wear a shirt from just any brand that offered me one? No. But, it just so happens that Wokai, Kiva, Grameen, and Vittana are all microfinance brands that I’m passionate about. And, if I had a shirt from each of them, I’d happily wear them and spread their message to more people as a walking mini billboard. Do you have a nonprofit with passionate supporters? Whether they be family members or best friends, I’m sure you have at least a few. Turn them into walking mobile billboards.

Now, I have no idea how many people are getting these same shirts. But that’s not the point. The fact that the reward feels “special” is all that matters to me (and others) who received this offer. Now, that could change if I see hundreds of other people around the Seattle area wearing Wokai shirts — but until that happens, this is a brilliant fundraising & marketing initiative

Well done, Wokai.

I was just taking a look at Wokai as a result of a post on Facebook (linking to this post about moving Wokai to the cloud) — and noticed a feature I absolutely LOVE when I signed in. Contribution Plans!

Uploaded with Skitch!

The feature allows a registered member of Wokai to set up a recurring contribution (to entrepreneurs in China) and/or donation (to Wokai overhead) that will be billed either monthly or quarterly to a credit card. For instance, I just set up a donation of $25 every three months with a $10 donation to Wokai. It’s not much, but every little bit counts. I’ve long been a supporter of the organization and would have donated more often had this feature been in existence since the beginning. But now, I can no longer use the excuse that “I forgot” when it comes to donating — but unfortunately I’ll have to use that one for my lack of donations over the past couple years

This is an unbelievably smart feature on Wokai’s part, and one that not even Kiva has implemented yet (if I’m wrong on that, let me know). It’s a fact that donors around the globe are being bombarded from all angles with pitches to help NGO A, NGO B, and NGO C — but now, if Wokai can win their attention once (no small task), they have the ability to sign up recurring donors rather than relying on email marketing to bring donors back to make additional transactions. I have no idea the actual numbers, but I’m betting a recurring donor is at least 10x as valuable to Wokai (since you have to factor in donor acquisition costs) than a one time donor.

To access and set up a Wokai contribution plan for yourself, just login and click the “Contribution Plan” option within your “My Wokai“.

I’m willing to bet that more peer to peer lending platforms, and other non profits for that matter, will start implementing this feature in the near future.

Happy [continual] contributing!!

This was posted on the Wokai Blog earlier this week.

The Global Policy Institute at the London Metropolitan University has recently published the first of a series of reports on microfinance in China. In this paper they offer their view of what is preventing microcredit from developing in China and offer recommendations for Chinese policy makers that wish to promote this sector.

According to their analysis, the slow growth of microcredit in China is attributed to a set up regulations that need to be amended, lack of access to domestic and international capital markets as source of funding, and tight economic viability of microcredit companies. The conclusion is that while some non profit NGOs operating in China are laudable, true impact on the millions of people at the bottom of the pyramid can only happen with the implementation of a double-bottom-line approach of helping the poor as well as establishing financially viable lending entities.

The proposal is to create a newer, more flexible organization regulated by an independent body that will allow customer deposits, will not have strict minimum capital requirements, is tax-exempt, and can accept investment domestically and internationally.

The report introduces key relevant facts in Part 1, highlights current problems in Part 2, and offers policy recommendations in Part 3. Conclusions are the results of field visits to Association of Rural Development of Yilong County (ARDY- Wokai’s Sichuan Field Partner) as well as meetings with organizations like UNDP, PlanetFinance, Chinese Academy of Social Science and Grameen.

This 20 page report is well written and definitely worth a read. Download here.

For those of you who will be in China in early August (or wanting to do a bit of traveling), check out Frexh Shanghai 2010 — a two day art/food/fashion/music event in Shanghai August 6th and 7th! Part of the proceeds will benefit Wokai, which as most of you likely know, is China’s first microfinance lending platform.

Here’s a video the Frexh team put together highlighting Wokai. I don’t have a ton of experience with video, but I do know making high quality videos is not easy and I’m impressed with the quality of this one by the Frexh team.

You can get further info about the event here.

[via Jenny Gao at the Wokai blog]

Congrats to Casey Wilson and the Wokai team for landing an appearance on Morning Call Bloomberg this past week!! Here’s the video:

Casey Wilson recently had a great email that she sent out about the recent articles about Kiva in the NY times that I thought was worth posting:

You might have read Stephanie Strom’s article “Confusion Where Money Lent via Kiva Goes” in the New York Times a few days ago.  This issue has been making the rounds since David Roodman’s post a month ago.  As a fellow “peer-to-peer” microfinance organization, we thought it was important for us to follow up with our own supporters on this issue.

To be clear, contributions on Wokai go to microfinance institutions (our “Field Partners”) in rural China, who are in charge of distributing the loans to the borrowers and collecting repayment.  A borrower can in fact receive a loan from a Field Partner prior the time the loan is “100% funded” on the Wokai website.  Below are two excerpts from Wokai’s FAQ that might shed more light on the issue.

Can a recipient’s loan start before it is 100% funded?

Yes. Once a Field Partner has posted a recipient’s profile online, Wokai Field Partners can use their own capital to issue that recipient’s loan. Wokai then reimburses this capital to the Field Partner once the recipient’s loan has been 100% funded. If the recipient’s loan is canceled for any reason, the recipient will no longer be designated as a “Wokai recipient” and that Field Partner will permanently fund the loan with its own capital reserves.

What happens if a recipient’s loan does not get 100% funded by the final fundraising day?

If a recipient’s loan is not 100% funded by the time it reaches zero “Days Left”, then Wokai will either extend the recipient’s fundraising period by one month or, if there is any specific reason why contributors are choosing not to fund the recipient, Wokai will cancel the recipient and allow contributors to select a new recipient to support.

Wokai is committed to being transparent in its processes.  To that end, we discuss our field partner relationships right on our “About” pages.  We even received credit from David Roodman in his original post for being very open about our relationships with field partners.

To read more about what Wokai does, visit their site at Wokai.org

[via WokaiSeattle on Twitter]