Things the Internet is missing #1: A central way of managing my ’stakes’

There are plenty of things I can think of that the Internet doesn’t do very well yet, as far as I’m aware at least. So in the hope that blogging about them either causes someone to go “Oi, what about this brilliant thing over here?!” or prompts someone with more time than I have to create the perfect solution for me, I’m going to try to explain what I think they are over a few posts.

The first thing that I think would be good is a simple way of managing things that I have a stake in. Basically that means charities and things I’ve pledged to support.

Say, for example, I’ve invested in some bands at slicethepie and in some local and journalism projects (should someone provide me with a good means of doing so), and I’m giving money to charities x and y, and a couple of decent podcasts and documentary film makers…

By this point I’ve no idea how much I’ve got invested or how much is going out of my bank account each month on these things, at least without doing a fair bit of sorting and adding up. And what about the other things I’ve taken on, say through pledgebank?

I want all of that information to be brought together in one place. And I want to be informed of other things I might want to invest in or support. And I was to share that portfolio with other people so they might also be encouraged to supportthe same things…

And of course it would need to give me at a glance access to updates on all of my ’stakes’ and indicate when something I’ve invested in is either dissolved or reaches launch.

Has anyone ever done any work on an open standard for small investments and charitable contributions?

I also think there are some terminology issues here:

Pledge is something that I will do if a bunch of people do something first (i.e. pledge to do the same).

Charity can be either a one-off or a regular contribution but it’s clear that there is no return.

Supporting a podcast or film through donations is similar, although maybe in future they should be investments rather than donations - if a podcast becomes highly profitable (or get sold!) then listeners who have supported it for a long time might feel they should benefit from it (although I’m sure in reality they will feel that theior enjoyment of the show has been payment enough and will most likely be overjoyed that the producers of the podcast have been successful).

But then there is that model where the donations need to reach a certain threashold before anything happens at all, and there is some hope of a return on that invesment but for the most part it’s unlikely. What are those, are they simple ‘investments’? Or should there be some other term to describe this relationship? A ‘commission’ maybe?

Well, anyway, I’d like a system that could manage all those things in one place please!

Thank you