No investment is without risk, it is whether you are able to be fully informed as to what the risks are that counts towards any decision to invest.
If you look at my 'trust' profile you will see I dealt with user
Pcfli and bought a few of the very first Innosilicon A2 Scrypt miners from him in May of last year. He offers good prices on ASIC miners and very reasonable hosting fees.
Even if you cannot afford a whole miner yourself, you could get together with others and do a 'group buy' and agree on what to mine and when, distributing the mining income accordingly. That's if you can be trustworthy enough to each other.
But, TBH, mining is rarely that profitable, so you would need to make sure you can at least run through the numbers before you commit to ensure you don't risk ending up with less than what you start with.
As for development projects to invest in, no, as I said already most people here aren't the type who contribute usefully to them and are, more often than not, a demanding pain in the ass. You'll need to do your own research if you want to sort the wheat from the chaff.