Poverty2Prosperity.org

02/02/2026

2025 Year End Update!
Hi P2P Friends and Donors,

We have no current fundraiser asks, we just want to send you our annual update because good news is definitely appreciated by us and we have good news to share:

We had a good 2025 year of strong lending! We actually raised our repayment rate across our funds from 98.45% to 98.92% which is actually quite a big one-year improvement! Today also marks the 4 year old birthday of our wonderful Artisans Fund which support loans to artists and is one of our best performing funds. Ever wonder how each of our funds does in terms of repayments? Now you will know. This info comes from a recent 75 minute presentation on P2P & Microfinance that I was asked to give to students at Nueva High School in the SF Bay Area.

• India 100%
• Southeast Asia 100%
• Agriculture 99.9% (USA included)
• Climate 99.9%
• Artists 99.8% (1 field partner (Novica) has a 0.00% default rate for 13+ years)
• Sybil Gibson Memorial Fund 99.3% (Mostly Men!)
• Personal Housing 99.2%
• Women’s 99.1%
• General 99.1%*
2 funds: Main General 98.8% - #2 Fund Intern Led at 99.51% (way to go, young interns!)
• SOS 98.6% (saves loans from expiring and going unfunded)
• Youth 98.1%
• Education 97.8%
• Single Parents 97.6%

We have now made over 65,000 loans with more than 97% of ALL donations since 2008 going directly into our loan-making program thanks to our ultra-low overhead! Looking back over our annual progress announcements, I noticed that in 2011 we were pleased to announce that we had passed the 2,000 loan mark! We've come a long ways since then! In all, P2P has guided just over $9 million in microfinance lending in 95 different countries. Our top four countries are:

Philippines 7.23%
Tajikistan 5.60%
Peru 5.50%
Kenya 4.70%

Our next thoughts are now focused on perhaps an Africa Fund at some point this year if we can find a founding donor since our India and Southeast Asia funds have been performing so well.

We currently have four interns (2 from Nueva High School and 2 from Dartmouth College). They are doing real work for us and gaining meaningful knowledge and experience.

Thanks for your time reading our information. We respect your inbox and try to send only 3-4 emails per year.

-Scott

Scott Paterson
Founder
Poverty2Prosperity.org
Making 0% Interest Loans to the Working Poor since 2008!

01/15/2026

Here's some interesting lending stats from over 17 years of 0% loan-making at P2P. We have a Women's Fund and we also have a Donor-Advised "Perpetual Fund" (The Sybil Gibson Memorial Fund). Sybil's son made a founding donation of $5,000 to establish this DAF on P2P in his mom's memory. Across P2P funds, we've made 75% of our loans to women (with the Women's Fund affecting this clearly). When we talk about household financials, there are stats going back to the creation of the Womens' Fund (2014):
"On average, women reinvest 80% of their income in the well-being of their children and working women are more likely to educate their daughters than men."
However, Sybil loved her sons and 57% of the loans made in this Perpetual Fund are made to men.
The Great News. This account is actually outperforming the Women's Fund and we are finding that the male borrowers we select are repaying just as well. The repayment rates are SPECTACULAR in both:
Sybil Gibson Memorial Fund: 99.3% Repayment Rate
Women's Fund: 99.1% Repayment Rate
Donate to either! See a list of all of our funds! We'll be announcing are 2008-2025 repayment rates across all of our funds soon. The total repayment rate across all of our international funds and 65,000+ loans made is 98.92%

Zero percent interest loans to the working poor

12/25/2025

P2P has some nice signage on highway 101 in the San Francisco Bay Area this end of year!
https://Poverty2Prosperity.org/donations.html

12/02/2025

P2P Launches Repeat Borrowers Fund for

When I started P2P with my Co-Founder, Colette, we didn't know for sure that the concept of providing 0% loans to the working poor would be a sustainable project, but we really believed in the idea that given a help-out rather than a hand-out, people just needed an opportunity and they would provide the proof.

We've made over 60,000 loans now since 2008 with a higher than 98% repayment rate. Our program is working! At this rate, the founding donation made in 2008 will still be making new loans in 2100. Some people we work with tell us we shouldn't mention that our overhead is less than 3% because it's practically unbelievable, but it's true; over 97% of all of the donations made since 2008 have gone directly into our loan-making program.

This GivingTuesday we are launching our new fund to provide repeat borrowers with more support. The most important fact about this fund is what it is NOT. This fund does NOT provide loans to borrowers who already have a loan. P2P has never provided add-on loans or loans to pay back other loans. We work with fully-vetted (face to face) borrowers who are not participating in any kind of trap of cyclical lending. This fund aims to provide more funding to borrowers of ours who have proven themselves successful using an initial loan to accomplish their goals and have successfully repaid it. They are coming back to us to expand their business, grow the number of local people they employ, and be even more successful. These are borrowers who already know how to work well with P2P and the importance of savings, health care, sending their children to school to get an education, and providing stable housing. The in-country partners we work with don't just provide payment processing for us and our borrowers, they also provide education and support to our borrowers. We feel these may be some of the most reliable loans we will make in the future.

The GivingTuesday campaign will run through end of year giving (Nov 28th-Dec 31st), so please share the details if you can. We have exciting matching going on for this fund too. One of of our previous GivingTuesday donors is matching all donations to this fund up to $10,000: Matching is at 100% for the first $5,000 and they will match the next $5,000 in donations at 200% for a total match of $15,000.

P2P Website Donation Page:
https://Poverty2Prosperity.org/donations.html

Even if this fund is not interesting to you, we do have a number of other great funds you can support: Single Parents (also has 100% match currently), Artisans (one of our most reliable repayment rates), Women, Youth (26 & Under), Climate (supports business activities that help alleviate climate change - also has matching), Education (tuition fees and education providers), Agriculture, and Personal Housing. We now have three region-specific funds too: USA, India (Bharat), and Southeast Asia funds. Our Memorial Wall Fund allows you to donate in honor/memory of others too. Our full listing of funds with descriptions is at the donation link above.

Thanks for your time and support,

-Scott
Founder
Poverty2Prosperity.org

Zero percent interest loans to the working poor

04/21/2025

Poverty2Prosperity.org (P2P), is excited to announce our Earth Day Fundraiser to support our Climate Fund! As an organization lending to small businesses for over 16 years and in the spirit of Earth Day, we are continuing our partnership with Climate Pilots to expand our reach to borrowers whose activities expand sustainability in their communities to last for generations.

Our Climate Fund Earth Day fundraiser has two generous anonymous donors who will match donations on a 100% match up to $5,000 and a 200% match for $5,001 to $10,000. With this support, we have the potential to raise roughly $15,000 in matching donations and support climate resilience in vulnerable communities. We’ll keep folks updated on the current donation amounts on the top of our website’s main page (https://Poverty2Prosperity.org).

Here are some examples of the types of loans that will be funded: Solar solutions for smallholder farmers, lamps (replacing kerosene), food storage which helps to reduce food waste and make food production more efficient, recycling collection services, regenerative agriculture (e.g. putting nitrogen back in the soil), biomass stoves and biodigesters, seaweed farming, and bamboo, just to name several.

All donations for the Earth Day fundraiser that will be matched will be accepted from Sunday, April 20th to Sunday, April 27th.

P2P Website Donation Page: https://Poverty2Prosperity.org/donations.html

Poverty 2 Prosperity, Inc. is a 501(c)(3) and donations are tax deductible. In 16 years, P2P has made over 50,000 loans with a 99% repayment rate and with over 97% of all donations going directly into our loan-making program. Our founding donation in 2008 will still be making new loans in 2100.

*If our Climate Fund doesn’t knock your socks off today, you can donate to any of our other funds. Some examples of our other funds are: Women’s Fund, Single Parents Fund (also currently being matched 100%), Youth Fund (26 & Under), Education Fund (tuition and providers), Personal Housing Fund, Artisans Fund, India (Bharat) Fund, Agriculture Fund, Southeast Asia Fund,and our USA Borrowers Fund.

Send a message to learn more

02/05/2025

P2P 2024 End of Year Progress Update:
It's time for an update as we have a lot of really great news and things are going very well for us and our zero percent loan-making mission.

1. The best news is that while we had been extremely cautious during the pandemic years going all the way down to pausing our lending to avoid a surge of defaults, we have returned to an 'aggressive' lending stance. 100% of all repayments in any given month are being lent back out in the very next month plus donations. While our repayment rate fell from 99% to 98.45% during the major COVID years, we feel we did a great job protecting your assets with which you've entrusted us. Better news is that our repayment rate has now been rising again and we are back to 98.97% (that includes ALL years from 2008-2024 - 50,000+ loans) so we have been above 99% over the last two years.

2. We had planned not to add any new lending funds in 2024, but opportunities came up for us that were pleasantly unexpected! Dr. Haresh Mirani, who immigrated to the US (Tennessee) from India, wanted to help those in poverty in his home country so he made a founding donation to set up the India Fund which is the very first country specific fund at P2P. A generous donor in the SF Bay Area noticed this new fund and contacted us about making a founding donation at the end of 2024 to establish the Southeast Asia Fund. Finally, we have been working with an outside group called, the Climate Pilots. This group's expertise is in finding borrowers whose businesses help to reduce climate change (e.g. solar pumps & lights, recycling collection services, regenerative agriculture, biomass stoves, biodigesters, seaweed farming). We held a successful Giving Tuesday fundraiser to establish this fund which is managed by the Climate Pilots group for us using our asset allocation protection guidelines. It's our first partnership with an outside group.

3. We received the highest possible rating, "Platinum Transparency", from Guidestar.org, the premier destination for nonprofit information and research.

4. Our robust high school internship program is thriving! We are currently mentoring four high school students empowering them to make real-life fund management decisions. Under our guidance, they learn the tools we use to vet borrowers and decide who receives funding. They are doing real financial management work for us. Some have gone on to do advanced data analysis of our in-country field partners allowing us to expand our lending program to additional borrowers. The result of their research is that we now place a much lower emphasis on delinquent loan rates. Just about all of our delinquent loans still repay, so we consider this just an adjustment to the loan length terms which is fine with us and opens up future loans to areas with longer loan length terms. A repaid loan is a success, delinquent or not! You can see our recent Intern Feature article about Devika Mathur from Nueva High School here: https://poverty2prosperity.org/news.html

We'd like to start more regional or country-specific funds and we'd really truly love to start a fund for repeat borrowers. These are borrowers who have proven they know how to work with a loan to further their business, begin hiring additional employees, and lift themselves and others out of poverty. They are hard-working! They are reliable! They are trustworthy! They are deserving!

Thanks for your time and your support!
https://Poverty2Prosperity.org

Poverty2Prosperty.org - zero percent interest loans to the working poor.

01/25/2025

I've (Scott, P2P Founder) been complaining over the last year that Google search results are FULL of sponsored ads, but didn't do anything about it. Yesterday, I switched to Bing for my searches and the nice part is my searches are earning money for the P2P Climate Fund now! We receive monthly payments from all the people who have selected to donate their Microsoft Rewards to P2P (choose Poverty 2 Prosperity, Inc.):
https://rewards.bing.com/

01/19/2025

Thanks to a founding donation at the end of 2024, the Poverty2Prosperity.org Southeast Asia Fund was created and has now made 41 loans!
https://Poverty2Prosperity.org

10/10/2024

Intern Feature: Devika Mathur, Nueva High School

Poverty 2 Prosperity, Inc. has a fun and sometimes quite challenging high school internship program. We've recently had one intern who has really performed some impressive work for us. After managing several of our funds and choosing borrowers to receive 0% interest loans, we had our intern delve into a complex data analysis of our in-country partners so we could better rate them. We felt we were not addressing all the loans we could without a better understanding of the data and our intern helped to fix this for us. Below is a feature of our best intern to date, Devika Mathur of Nueva High School. She answers the following questions:
How did you first learn about P2P?
What did you find interesting about P2P?
Does it relate to any classes you've taken in high school?
What is your favorite type/sector of loan and why?
What's the most interesting or surprising thing you've learned working at P2P?

News about Poverty2Prosperty.org - zero percent interest loans to the working poor.

07/03/2024

We have two new funds coming online and we'll probably do a fundraiser this month for one of them. We 've started funds for Climate related loans and a fund for loans in India. Here's more information about our Climate Fund: This is our latest fund created in May 2024. We are pleased to share a collaborative project between P2P, a nonprofit with 501c3 status, and Climate Pilots, a team which finds loans that help people reduce their impact on the climate.
https://Poverty2Prosperity.org