A few years back, I had this idea of making giving work more like investing. You'd get annual reports, have access to "business statistics", etc. If you've never heard of kiva.org then go now and check it out. It's a "micro-lending" site where you can "invest" money (at 0% interest) in the businesses of third-world entrepreneurs. You can read about it here. It comes pretty darn close to my original idea. We have a portfolio, we can invest more money in different business opportunities, we get a return (our money is repaid and can be reloaned... plus it feels good to help), and we get regular status reports.
Shiree and I loaned money to Gulshen Aliyeva in Azerbijan. So far we've gotten about 3 repayments on the loan (though we can't reloan the money until it's fully paid off). You can also follow our other loans (of which currently there aren't any ;)
About the only thing that would make it cooler is the ability to interact with the entrepreneurs via e-mail/Kiva. Obviously there would probably need to be a "gateway" where the email is printed and mailed to the entrepreneurs with a SASE which they could use to send a reply back (which was scanned and then posted on the site).
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I just noticed that at the bottom of Gulshen's info page it lists all of the people who have made loans to her business. It might be cool for us as a group to find a business to loan to (each of us putting in whatever we feel led to give) and then pray for that business in a regular way.
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