Way back in April 2009, I wrote a glowing post about my love affair with Kiva.org, the online microlending website. The idea is a great one: connect everyday people with entrepreneurs around the world who need small loans to start or grow their businesses. Go to the website, find an entrepreneur you want to loan $25 to, click and pay, and your money is winging its way into the pocket of your "adopted" small businessperson.

Well, that's the way it's SUPPOSED to work.

I was shocked to read a recent article in the New York Times that revealed that the one-to-one, lender-to-borrower connection that I was so enamored with is actually an illusion. Instead, my $25 loans -- and those of thousands of other lenders, totaling some $100 million in loans over the past four years -- were going into the coffers of large microfinance institutions. Yes, these funds were eventually being loaned out to deserving entrepreneurs, but not the ones I thought I had chosen.

This would probably have been okay with me, but what was not okay with me is that I received no emailed explanation of any of this from Kiva.org, nor an apology for misleading the many people who loaned their money in good faith. The organization has broken my trust, and I won't be initiating any new loans via Kiva.org. Instead, I will seek out a microlending institution that allows me to select the entrepreneurs I want to support.

There is a lesson here for entrepreneurs and other businesspeople. Trust is one of the most important things you have with your clients and customers. Building trust can take years, but losing it can take just a second. And once it's lost, it may very well be lost forever.

And forever is a very long time.