Lending Club: I put in $x in 2010/2011, and now I have $1.31*x.
Kiva: I put in $x around the same time, I now have $0.88*x. (this is fine. in the meantime that $x has been loaned and reloaned about 7 times. it’s trying to do some good, not trying to make a return. shoot, you can’t even make a return.)
Scottrade traditional index funds stuff: I put in $x: 7% in 2008, 14% in 2009, and 78% in 2011, and now I have $1.96*x. Wow.

Lessons learned:
1. invest in 2008/09 :-/
2. invest in index funds, still, always
3. I can’t really trust anyone to calculate these numbers in ways I can easily understand. Lending Club tells me I’m getting “Adjusted Net Annualized Return” of 8.31%. I assume this means I would have (1.0831^5)*x = 1.49*x dollars now. If you gave me those start/end numbers, I’d calculate that I’ve made about 5.5% per year. Which is not terrible, but it’s not 8.31%.
4. It’s surprisingly hard to get this info. Which is surprising, because this is exactly the kind of info you should get. It’s easy to see your portfolio’s performance over the last N days, which is worse than useless.

Edit: if you want to try Lending Club, use this link and I think we both get some free money?
Also, my other current jam is Wealthfront, so try that out too. Happy to talk more about either.