Our Development Philosophy

John and Keith Woodlock have followed a requirements-driven development philosophy as they’ve built out the core for Mifos X. They along with several Specialists in the community including Conflux Technologies, Hugo Technologies, and SolDevelo have been working closely with select MFIs to build out applications that will support the various methodologies of bringing financial services to the poor. All development has been based directly on user requirements that we have been rapidly testing and iterating on with these pilot users. We are now rolling out functionalities to fully support group lending methodologies with a target of having Mifos X reach feature parity with Mifos 2.6 by mid-2013.

Meet Elevate Africa

Elevate Africa, www.elevateafrica.org,  is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization established in California in April 2012 – it was formally known as Creocore. They partner with entrepreneurs in Mali and Burkina Faso, West Africa, to start and grow local businesses which are owned, managed and controlled exclusively by local entrepreneurs on local terms. West Africa is one of the absolute poorest regions in the world. Their vision is self-sustaining development in local communities to advance the following goals: increase self-reliance, decrease the need for outside aid, create living-wage jobs, apply appropriate technologies to improve quality of life and leverage training and education to sustain lasting growth. Everything they do is inspired by their Christian worldview.

Why Mifos X?

Elevate Africa provide loans to individual businesses only, with no group loans and no co-signing of loans. As Henrik puts, “The Mifos X  platform is ideally suited for this purpose: It has strong support for individual loans, it is very flexible and very easy to use. Mifos X will make a huge difference in our organization.”

In the weeks since they’ve gone live, Elevate Africa is already seeing the benefits of Mifos X. With their highly specialized processes focusing on the individual, the flexibility and granularity in which the system has been tailored to their approach has exceeded their expectations.  The interface for Mifos 2.x also was cumbersome for Malian staff to use since it was so tied to the group lending approach. Henrik is already certain that the team on the ground will now have greater ownership over their loan portfolio now that they’ll be able to fully use the Mifos system.

Elevate Africa – an Ideal Beta-Tester

Henrik’s role as a beta-tester has been invaluable; a testament to the dedication he’s shown to the Mifos community as Henrik was one of our biggest and most active supporters of Mifos throughout the transition from Grameen to COSM.  The small size of Elevate Africa and the availability and willingness of Henrik to contribute have been key to this success.  From the start, Henrik provided a clear articulation of Elevate Africa’s requirements.  Throughout the development/testing process, he has been thoroughly documenting any and all bugs he finds and has been very hands-on in testing each feature as it comes out.  One of his most valuable characteristics has been his honesty and directness in saying what he needs and never hesitating to clearly speak his mind.

Want to be a Beta-Tester?

Do you want to be one of the first MFIs to use Mifos X? Are you ready to provide the same level of feedback that Henrik has been giving? Then we want you – we’re seeking more beta-testers for our individual lending application.  We’ll spin you up with a free hosted instance on Amazon EC2 and configure it to your needs.  This is all with the caveat that Mifos X is still in beta until we have our first stable release in Q1 of 2013.  As we wrap up more of the group lending functionalities, we’ll be expanding our pilot user group for that.

Stay tuned for more highlights of our lighthouse customers who’ve been going live on Mifos X and please if you’re interested or have an MFI that you’re supporting who’s interested in deploying Mifos X – share their requirements with us so we can ensure they’re covered in our product roadmap. Mifos X is a true platform and we’re ready to broaden who this solution will benefit – we’ll no longer be just a great system for joint-liability groups – we’ll fully support SHGs, Village Banking, Cooperatives or whatever flavor of microfinance you deliver.

 

 

Esha Omar has taken a total of 3 business loans   from the time she joined Fursa Leo on July 26, 2011  She has used the funds to enhance her business of selling ice cubes and, she has also taken school fees loan to pay for her son’s primary education.

She came to Fursa Leo when she was 8 months pregnant and her business was failing due to lack of fresh capital. At the time, she relied on her husband to catering all the family bills with his small income. She and her family lived in a small house in a low income area known as Kisauni in Mombasa.

Fursa Leo took her through the mandatory financial literacy programm and, here she learnt the importance of record keeping, debt management and saving. She received a start-up loan of KES 5,000/= (equivalent to USD 60) to kick start her failing business. She took the skills learnt from Fursa Leo very seriously and the loan that she was advanced helped her get back her business back on track. Thereafter, she started seeing growth in the business and good returns as well.

Right after clearing the start-up loan, schools had opened and their son had to go back to school. The father had travelled and she did not have enough money to pay the required fees. She came to us and applied for an education loan. Due to the good savings culture she had  with Fursa Leo Microfinance, she was advanced an education loan four times her first loan size and she managed to pay for her son’s school fees. The business was not interrupted and she was making more ice cubes to meet her clients demand. Her husband returned and they managed to pay the whole school fees loan that was advanced by Fursa Leo Microfinance.

Initially, she would transport the ice cubes by public means from her homestead to other areas, but since the demand for her product was too high and business was growing, she had to look for ways to manage this and so they moved to a house in town center with improved standards compared to her previous home..

She then borrowed another business loan of KES 50,000/= (equivalent to USD 600) in order to buy a freezer to store the ice cubes as the volumes could not fit in her normal refrigerator. She experienced more sales and better returns everyday; she managed to clear the loan in 6 months and then borrowed another one for KES 70,000/= (approx. USD 850).

Esha Omar now has every reason to smile in her life, she is looking forward to expand her business further by borrowing KES 100,000 (equivalent to USD 1200) and above. She is targeting to be selling not only ice cubes but even do ice creams which are also in high demand in hot weather of Mombasa.

How Esha has helped her family

Esha has uplifted the living standards of her family; they can now enjoy having 3 heavy and healthy meals in a day, afford a basic good home, educate her children  save for her families future.

How has Esha benefited from technology?

With good record keeping and regular guidance from our officers. She used  Mifos to check her records, she knows her financial status quite well and she also embraces MPESA technology which has made loan payment easier and she also saves with Fursa Leo via MPESA paybill service.

It’s a terrific experience to spend a weekend hacking for social good. Knowing that you’re working with literally thousands of others worldwide makes it simply awe-inspiring.

That’s why we love Random Hacks of Kindness Global: 2 days + 30 countries + 3000 geeks working on making the world a better, safer place. Its mission is strongly aligned with our own at SocialCoding4Good: build awareness of technology serving humanity, engage technical volunteers to contribute their time and talents to design and develop it, and foster cross-sector collaboration to amplify its impact.

At RHoK Global in June 2012, we joined the RHoK Sustainability Project, and invited participants to build solutions addressing challenges in accessibility or human rights, two core program areas at Benetech. One solution would be selected to receive technical development leadership, and guidance toward application and organizational sustainability. We were deeply impressed by the creativity of the teams and their projects, and after a challenging decision process, selected Amnesty International’s Invisible Victims project, which seeks to leverage digital services to support migrants, making the invisible crimes against them visible, without putting migrants, their families, and networks, at further risk. Our partnership, launched shortly after RHoK June 2012, continues forward with a focus on data and digital security.

As December’s RHoK Global event quickly approaches, we are thrilled to be participating once again. We realized that our humanitarian free and open source software (HFOSS) partners had important roadmap projects with tremendous potential, but in many cases lacked the resources to design, prototype, and develop them. Each of these partners has established deployments and an active community, and a demonstrated history of creating transformative impact. RHoK Global presented a perfect opportunity to support the sustainability of an existing partner, and in so doing, connect individual developers and corporate teams around the globe with the chance to apply their energy, enthusiasm, and experience for social benefit.

We’ve teamed up with Mifos, The Community for Open Source Microfinance, an open source platform currently being used in 20 countries to deliver financial services to more than a million people, and HP Social Innovation, a Random Hacks of Kindness Core Partner as well as our own. Mifos is building a world where each person has the access to financial resources needed to create a better life for themselves and their family – truly demonstrating the power of technology to empower peoples’ lives every day. Mifos, HP, and SocialCoding4Good will have subject matter experts, technical leads, and developer teams at RHoK Bangalore, Dublin, and San Francisco, focusing on three key projects:

• Creating a mobile version of Mifos X, enabling information flows, processes, and transactions to be completed via mobile.
• Developing SMS communication capability, providing a simple yet powerful way for individuals to interact with Mifos via their SMS-enabled phone.
• Making Mifos more transparent by empowering staff to more easily use client information for document generation and reporting.

The contributions of global RHoK participants during the course of the weekend – and beyond – will strengthen Mifos’ efforts to scale towards a vision of enabling 3 Million Maries to create a world without poverty. Transformative impact, indeed. Won’t you join us?

Are you ready to RHoK with Mifos? Learn more at and sign up for your local event on the Random Hacks of Kindness website. We’re excited to collaborate with you!

First off we want to graciously thank Paul Maritz for proposing and funding the summit; without him none of it would have been possible. A big thank you as well to Cat Allman and Google’s Open Source Programs office who pitched in last minute support to allow us to offer travel scholarships to several more individuals flying in from Africa. Please also extend your gratitude to Suresh, Arun, Praveen, and Rao from Grameen Koota for hosting the summit and conducting site visits along with Nirantara. Finally, a huge thank you to Vishwas, Nayan, and Ashok from Conflux Technologies who went out of their way to ensure smooth logistics and coordinate activities on the ground in Bangalore.

All in all, it was a productive (at some times hectic) summit in which we covered our primary objectives set forth in our agenda. We overcame poor WiFi, purple screen projectors, and pockets of rain to achieve our goals:

• We collectively created a Mifos X product roadmap for 2013
• We successfully introduced the new platform and collaboration model to developers
• We laid the groundwork for a Specialist Program that will empower them to distribute and support Mifos X sustainably worldwide.

It was also a time to see another less serious side of the community as we had some fun down-time too. While we were limited in our time to experience Bangalore, we had some great competitions in table tennis and basketball – of which Team Poland emerged victorious.

Arun readies his serve for Somash

Looking back at the summit, I’m most fond of how well it established that we are a community – we instilled that vital sense of belonging and made everyone feel that we are a part of this movement led by COSM.  For the first time, people were able to see, hear, and share in the similar experiences and efforts they all had undertaken. Specialists, MFIs, and developers alike could see the deep investment and commitment everyone has pledged towards our project.  This shared commitment and responsibility for the project renewed confidence in its success and built great optimism for where we’re headed.

One of the many hallway discussions at the Mifos Summit

A high level of energy and momentum filled the air throughout the summit. I could feel a constant buzz of energy even late into the night that was fueled by excitement and invigoration for the future and Mifos X that continues online throughout the project today.

We learned many lessons for improving the summit and are eager to grow this into an annual conference. We are already planning when and where to host this in 2013 so stay tuned for more info.

Photos from the Summit and notes from each session have been posted to the wiki but for for those who couldn’t attend, here are some of the major takeaways.

Product and Vision Planning Sessions

We dedicated the majority of the summit to brainstorming and laying out the vision and roadmap for Mifos X.  By having more than 3 dozen members of the community in one room for the first time, we aimed to capitalize on the diversity of backgrounds, geographies, and skillsets by bringing these ideas and perspectives together.

Kicking off the summit we hosted a session on the vision of not only our product but our entire community and the direction we should head to respond to the ever-growing demands of bringing financial services to the poor. The range of experiences shared and the advice provided, opened our eyes and gave a unifying clarity to what we wanted to achieve through both COSM and the Mifos X platform.

Some of the main takeaways were:

• Simplicity, flexibility, cost, and local support are key differentiators amongst competition.
• Focus – identify our target market, build from our strengths, and find success there first.
• Client data as the focal point for all the financial and information flows in our platform.

A “prototype” of our vision started to emerge for Craig and is captured here:

Since our group was so large but we wanted everyone to participate, we structured the product roadmap discussion into three sessions. During each session there would be three concurrent groups covering a core functional area of the product.  Each was led by a subject matter expert to facilitate a smooth and thorough discussion.

Breakout Session for Mifos X Roadmap Planning

The following day we presented the main requirements and takeways from each session and collectively prioritized the high-level roadmap for 2013.  Accounting and Reporting undoubtedly rose to the top.  We also identified some important requirements for mobile, client data, and systems integration along with key inputs on security and overall user experience for Mifos X. Visit the wiki for detailed notes from each session

A substantial portion of the requirements discussed have already been built or are being built in Mifos X, so we are well on our way. With these priorities in place, we are now going to take these detailed business requirements and allocate and schedule them into a detailed roadmap for 2013 – watch JIRA for updates and get ready to help in fleshing out the detailed specs.

Next Steps

• Complete priorities 1, 2, 3 which were already well-incorporated in the 2012 Mifos X product plan.
• Input requirements into issue tracker & solicit detailed use cases/specs from community.
• Schedule and allocate resources for these features across 2013 roadmap.

Suresh Krishna Opening the Summit

We then broke out into parallel tracks with Keith and John leading the developers and technically-oriented attendees and Craig and Ed leading the Specialists and business-oriented attendees.

Developer Sessions

Keith and John hosted a number of sessions to introduce the new Mifos X platform and its underlying  architecture and design as well as the development framework for which we’ll lead a community-driven development model in 2013. In total two dozen of our techies participated in the following sessions:

• Mifos X Introduction (technical overview, nuts & bolts of architecture, hands-on building of App through API)
• Orientation on our Collaboration Model (GitHub, setting up environment, discussion on processes/challenges)

Techies during a developer tutorial session

The main takeaways from these sessions were:

1. We laid the foundation for bringing in the next layer of external developers onto Mifos X by

• Establishing the GitHub-based collaboration model we will use for development going forward – fork/pull method for all contributions (both paid/unpaid)
• Reducing the barriers of people using the tools, accessing the code, asking for help
  • Pulled in some minor code commits from Natu and Udai during summit.
  • Developers from MFIs such as Ismail from enda, George from Al Majmoua, Praveen from GK are starting to develop.

2. We showed in a hands-on manner the benefits of Mifos X & chosen architecture by

• Demonstrating core areas of the platform and how they’re approached through the API.
• Connecting the business requirements discussed in roadmap planning sessions with how easily these could be built through the API in Mifos X.

Next Steps

1. Onboard developers from larger MFIs & Specialists with simple development tasks
2. Publicize the collaboration infrastructure for new developers
3. Conduct a regular online developer meetup focused on Mifos X development topics.

Enjoying the Indian cuisine

Specialist Sessions

Craig and Ed hosted several sessions with the rest of the attendees made up of Specialists, strategic partners, and MFIs (Mifos and non-Mifos users).  We identified the business and project management challenges faced so we could build out the Specialist Program. We validated the core strategy of COSM, the fundamental role Specialists play, and the areas where we can add the most value.  These sessions included a discussion on implementation best practices, an introduction of our Specialist program, and a roundtable on challenges promoting Mifos and where COSM can leverage its strengths the most.

Please refer to the Specialist session notes for more but here are the main points that emerged:

• Need for education and overall awareness of the market about Mifos
• Stronger online presence to highlight our successes and showcase customer references.
• Recognition, validation, and endorsement of active qualified Mifos Specialists.
• Importance of strategic relationships with local influencers like funders and national associations.
• Many opportunities in the marketplace and a willingness to pay for this certification, awareness, endorsement, and training.

Even during the summit itself, new opportunities were blossoming as several Specialists were able to strike new support agreements with MFIs they’d yet to meet in person until now.  New Specialists are emerging and MFIs themselves have a strong willingness to purchase training for their IT staff.

Next Steps

• Launch the initial Specialist Program to recognize current group of active Specialists.
• Improve websites for SEO, awareness and selling Mifos as a solution through our Specialists.
• Begin top-down demand generation by deepening relationships with existing local influencers.

Mifos Developers Unite – Lukasz, Udai, and Michal

Community Sessions

To tie it all together, we discussed how the community could better collaborate and stay connected post-summit. We decided to move forward with proposing and adopting both a code of conduct and Community Council made up of Regional Community Leads.  These Regional Community Leads will be the local champions for Mifos and COSM in their region, expanding our global virtual community into a local and physical one. They will be entasked with evangelizing the initiative and ensuring that members of the community collaborate and come together in-person for events. A strong level of interest was shown and we’ve got several promising candidates to take on these roles in each of the regions.

Community Coming Together – look at those awesome shirts!

Next Steps

• Publish the community code of conduct.
• Select regional community leads (Community Council) and provide them with needed tools.

Site Visits

Cheery faces welcomed us at the center meeting

Praveen explaining documents reviewed during center meeting

Center Meeting of GK borrowers in Tumkur

Packing into a GK branch office to check out operations

Slideshow of photos from the site visit

Share your Stories and Photos with the Community!

Mifos Specialists are one of the most crucial links in our community – they are the driving force that is promoting and supporting Mifos worldwide.  Aside from championing our product and bringing the Mifos technology to new markets, they act as the fundamental bridge feeding in MFI requirements to be developed by the community. Specialists don’t stop there as many are also developing and localizing the product to fit their local market.  For all these reasons, COSM is focusing it energy on making these Specialists successful – they are the primary channel to market, the eyes and ears on the ground, and the entrepreneurial force that will help us sustainably scale.

We’ve highlighted various members from SolDevelo over the years so wanted to sit down with Natalia from their team to see what they’re focused on now and take a more personal look at some of the team.

Meet SolDevelo

SolDevelo is a dynamic software development and information technology outsourcing company from Poland. We are focused on delivering high quality software and innovative solutions. Our team is specialized in the Java/JEE platform, but also have experience in mobile solutions and other languages. We have continuously supported the Mifos project for several years and after the transition to the Community for Open Source Microfinance have taken over ongoing development of the Mifos 2.0 codebase. In that time we have implemented new features, provided quality assurance services and greatly improved stability of the product. Our work was recognized by the community both in 2010 and 2012 when SolDevelo team members – Jakub and Lukasz became Mifos Star Contributors.

For new and current Mifos users, SolDevelo provides a managed hosting service – MifCloud. It is a great solution for all MFIs and individual users who need support with deploying Mifos, data migration and software customization.

SolDevelo is also engaged in other projects, not connected with microfinance. For more information about our projects, you can visit our web page: http://www.soldevelo.com/projects.

What Motivates SolDevelo’s Contributions?

We are contributing to Mifos because it is a pleasure to be part of a fast-growing community from all around the world. We are motivated by that special goal – fighting poverty in third world counties by using technology to develop a high quality software.

Participation in Mifos community gives us a great opportunity to receive and respond to the challenges.

Who are you working with right now?

In addition to our MifCloud managed hosting services, we also offer custom Mifos development services. We just finished building out some custom features for Al Majmoua in Lebanon. Recently we have deployed a new MifCloud client: REDmutual in Uganda and have several new potential new clients in Africa that are also interested in our service.

What is your focus now and heading into 2013?

In 2013 year we are planning to continue our work with developing Mifos and MifosX projects. This is particularly important to extend the software functionality if we want to meet the needs of current customers and new users. We will make every effort to ensure user-friendly interface and high-quality data at any stage. We are especially excited to be a close part of the Mifos X, the next evolution of the platform for our community. Moreover we would like to extend MifCloud promotion and contribute to increase the number of Mifos users by supporting implementation, data migrations and assistance in regard to the Mifos functionality by performing trainings for all users who will need such opportunity.

SolDevelo’s Words of Advice for Others in the Community

SolDevelo team has been working with the Mifos community for several years. In that time, we have become more experienced and confident. For all new users and specialists in community of Mifos, we advise to cooperate with rest of the Mifos team, especially those who worked on creating Mifos from the beginning, and to share new ideas and plans. Together we can make more effective microfinance software, which fully covers the needs of customers, is easy to use, and always reliable.

Now Let’s Meet the Team Personally

From the left on the photo: Marcin Sienkiewicz, Kasia Piecielska, Lukasz Chudy, Natalia Szprega, Kamil Kalfas, Michal Dudzinski, Jakub Podeszwik.

Kamil Kalfas: For him, the most important area to change in Mifos is GLIM (Group Lending with Individual Monitoring) so he’s constantly working to improve it. In his free time he likes to stack his Rubik’s cube. For new contributors he advises: “never give up”.

Jakub Podeszwik: Together with Kamil, he works to improve GLIM. In his free time he goes to gym.

Michał Dudziński: It’s a good thing Michal is working on Mifos X because he would like to get rid of old technologies in Mifos. He advises new contributors to create code in a smart way so the others can easily work with your code. In his free time, he likes reading books and play games (also board games and card games), his hobby are travels and sport. (Note from Ed – Michal demonstrated his competitive nature during the Summit in India!)

Łukasz Chudy: Apart from Jakub, Lukasz has worked with Mifos the longest; in January 2012, he became Star Contributor. His advice for others in the community is “Testing Mifos to see if it does not do what it is supposed to do is only half the battle; the other half is seeing whether it does what it is supposed to do.” Interesting facts: I always start my working day with the feeling that a day without finding a bug is a wasted day. He’s favorite food is Polish and Mexican, and everything what is sweet. In free time he likes play basketball and table soccer. (Another note from Ed: Lukasz demonstrated his prowess in basketball and table tennis at the Summit in India).

Kasia Piecielska and Marcin Sienkiewicz are our new employees. Kasia inher free time likes to read books and watch movies; she advises new employees to ask as many questions as they can. Marcin likes drawing, developing himself and learning new interesting facts. Marcin: “Mifos is interesting application for all developing countries and provide real possibility for new life”.

Natalia Szprega: I focus on documentation so that new Mifos community members and individuals wishing to became specialists, can get through any difficulties straight from the beginning. In my free time, I spend time riding bike or rollers, swimming and during winter, ice skating. “You can learn everything, just sometimes you need more time”

Gripped by a comment made by Rupal Patel on the importance of client data during our Setting the Mifos X vision, Craig came up with a quick sketch that is a good first pass at our vision for Mifos X.  Client Data is at the center and the various flows of money or information that are coming in and out of the platform are clearly visualized.

This week this vision is starting to come to life for me after seeing a few posts and conversations on the topic.

Remixing Microfinance

Ignacio Mas wrote a great article that provides some excellent food for thought on the topic. In this blog post to the Stanford Social Innovation Review, he explores how the sector can explore hybrid models for the delivery of financial services to the poor.

By blurring the line between lending methodologies and incorporating informal the social aspects of informal financial services into their product portfolio, MFIs can offer products that are more responsive to their immediate needs.

“Innovation rarely comes by inventing a radical new thing or even a radical new way of doing something. Innovation is generally about re-mixing known elements in a creative way. Innovation means eroding the boundaries between all these financial models until something emerges that has aspects of each.”

In Mifos X we must not only be methodology-agnostic, we must also make the blending of the various methodologies seamless for the end user such that they have the power and the flexibility to create these innovative hybrid delivery models.

To quote Ignacio, “We need to search for all of the models in between, and in doing so, we will come closer to striking the right balance between flexibility for the customer and complexity in delivery.”

Mifos X can’t just stop at the flexibility to create and deliver these services, it must also help the MFI strike the right balance by enabling the analysis to design and develop these services. On that topic, CGAP and Microsave have been holding a stimulating virtual conference on the theme, Client Insights: How Can Providers Listen and Learn from Their Clients?:

“Discussions will explore ways in which organizations can listen and learn from their clients and the implications this has for decision-making, product design, delivery, branding, marketing and communication in the efforts to offer financial inclusion for all.”

Day 1 was full of interesting commentary on the quantitative and qualitative methods to capture and analyze all these client insights. Day 2 (October 31) will bring these discussions full circle to look at combining these methods and making client insight part of an organization’s DNA.

With client data at the center, Mifos X must provide the tools to capture whatever data in whatever form through whatever medium at any stage in the lifecycle of a client. Once that data is in, Mifos X must provide the tools to analyze that data and make the critical decisions in designing these client-centered products.

We know where we wan to get to. That leaves us at the question of what is the path we’ll take to create this open platform – 1) a platform that allows MFIs to remix microfinance and deliver a blended variety of informal and formal financial products and services and 2) a platform that puts the client at the center allowing the data capture and analysis to design these “hybrid models that bring together the best features of each [methodology].”

Help us lay that path. Tell us how.

Esha – Our Inspirational Marie

This last major release is code-named Esha K in recognition of Esha Omar Athman, a borrower  at Fursa Leo in Mombasa, Kenya.  Esha has been a client at Fursa Leo since July 26, 2011.  In that time, she has taken out 3 business loans and has significantly expanded her business enabling her to uplift the living standards of her family through a new home, better meal, and sending her son to school.

Esha came to Fursa Leo, eight months pregnant seeking start-up capital for her failing ice cube business while her husband struggled to help them pay their bill and provide for their family.  Through Fursa Leo’s mandatory financial literacy program and graduation through three larger loan cycles, Esha has brought her humble ice cube business from failure to prosperity.

Esha K – What’s Inside

Over the past month, we’ve made you an active part of the planning and development of Esha K through our many discussions during our user-meetups.  In all we had more than 6 man-months of features and bugs that were requested. We had to narrow back this work and trim out some nice-to-have features but we’re delighted with how the release is shaping up. Here is what SolDevelo is aiming to deliver by mid-late December

Core Portfolio Operations

For quite the while now, Mifos has lacked the support for daily meetings and the associated loan products. In Esha K, we’ll be adding:

• Support for Daily Meetings
• Daily Loan Repayment
• Daily Savings Collection and Posting

Dashboard on the Homepage

We know that the homepage is a critical area that all users see when they first log on.  It’s got a large amount of empty space that we thought could be put to better use. We want to make that homepage as powerful as it can be so will be adding a dashboard of the key business drivers and statistics in Mifos that you would like to see. Let us know what metrics you want to track so we can add them in.

Chart of Accounts Interface

To improve upon the Mifos-ACC accounting module, we’ll be adding in a more flexible user interface for both adding and modifying the chart of accounts.

File Upload Capabilities

A powerful new feature we’re looking forward to is the file upload module – you’ll now have the ability to upload and attach files to client and account records.  Now you can have one central place to store all your client information including identification, loan applications, etc.

Some other enhancements will include PPI reports developed by Conflux and sponsored by Adhikar, improvements to the search for large databases, the ability to adjust and forgive specific penalties, and the ability to backdate the creation of loan products and client activation dates for data migration purposes.

You can Help

There are a number of features that we had to remove due to resource constraints – we would love for these to make there way into the release and you the community can help make that happen by sponsoring a feature, volunteering, or contributing code as a Specialist.  There’s a wide list of features in the Mifos Backlog that include screen-based reporting, question group templates, improved interface for configuration, SMS push notifications, and more. Help make these other features possible!

Here’s a few posts from the past months highlighting the work of our Mifos Users.

GK Benchmarks its Client Protection Measures

Grameen Koota, one of the most active users of the Progress out of Poverty Index (PPI) in our community, was recently shortlisted by the Smart Campaign for a Client Protection Assessment. A team of assessors came to visit all levels of staff and analyze how their processes and culture foster a climate that respects, cherishes, and puts the client needs at the front of every decision. Read more about this and other news on the GK newsletter.  What is your organization doing to the protect its clients and what can we do in our software to promote the client’s best interests through transparency? Let us know on the mailing lists.

Elias Fanta moves into CED Program Lead Role at Nuru

It is with a bit of sadness that we say goodbye to Rebecca Herrington, the outgoing CED Program Manager at Nuru, but with great pleasure that we welcome on Elias Fanta who now steps into the role.  Elias comes from a strong background in microfinance, having coordinated the launch of Ethiopia’s first microfinance project in 1993. Since then he’s also been involved in the microfinance sector in the US as part of the Enterprise Development Group.  We are eager to send a big welcome to Elias from our community and look forward to not only continuing to support Nuru as they grow in Kenya and beyond. Elias’ vast knowledge of microfinance in East Africa will be an asset to the community as we strengthen our presence there.

A New Look for Lumana

Head over to lumana.org and take a look at their new website.  They’ve done a beautiful refresh which provides an eye-opening yet simple, clean, and warm design.  The new site does a wonderful job of telling their story in a simple powerful way putting what matters most front and center – the women they help and the tools they empower them with to eradicate poverty

Missions of Hope International reaches milestone on BigDent.org

Congratulations to our friends at Missions of Hope International Kenya who have now surpassed more than $100,000 in loans that have been lent to the residents of the Mathare slum in Kenya through their BigDent.org peer to peer lending site. They’re upgrading Mifos with the support of Zayyad from Intrasoft Technologies – we wish them the best of luck for a smooth upgrade.