If you're looking for a way to fund your next big idea, but have been coming up dry so far, you might want to look into social lending networks.

Prosper.com publicly launched just over a year ago, and there has been quite a bit of buzz about them - partially because Prosper is the second resource of its kind. Second only to its older brother in London, Zopa.com, which was fathered by the same company as Prosper, Benchmark Capital.

Good news first. At Prosper, "individual borrowers say how much they need to borrow (up to $25,000) and the maximum interest rate they will pay. Interested lenders say how much they want to lend, and at what rate. Prosper takes the lowest price lenders and groups them into a loan." - TechCrunch announcement of Prosper's launch. So what's the bad news?

How does Zopa deal with bad debts? If one of your borrowers defaults, Credit Resource Solutions Ltd, a collections agency, will undertake to recover any money outstanding. Should it be unable to do so after 120 days, you agree to sell the debt to a collections agency for a price that will be agreed at the time, but which will not be less than 10% of the amount then outstanding. The agency will pay a fixed percentage of the outstanding amount to us which we will pass back to you. We will not allow that borrower to borrow again and will suspend their membership. Furthermore, we will pass their details back to our credit referencing agency which may affect their ability to get credit in the future. - as quoted from the TechCrunch profile on Zopa.

Well, that's probably not bad news - strict policies like that help to provide a safer environment for everyone.