Are you thinking of starting a social enterprise? It seems more and more social enterprises are being created these days. Unfortunately, many of these social enterprises fail in their first years do to lack of practical business knowledge and a lack of funding.

Some social enterprises exist soley for the sake of helping out other social enterprises. A good example of this is the Social Enterprise Alliance. They exist to hook start-ups with inspiration and knowledge to help them start a successful social enterprise. This can be very helpful for people looking for mentors with knowledge and experience.

The age of the social enterprise is coming. If you want to start your own, make sure that you receive the best of help.

RetailMeNot.com features coupon codes and discounts for 50,000 online stores.  The site has a fairly simple organization with four main sections:  Coupon Codes, Printable Coupons, Grocery Coupons, and Community.

The first three are somewhat self-explanatory, but the fourth really caught my eye.  In the community section, users can post coupon codes that they find, they can comment on other people’s postings and leave feedback on whether the code works properly.  The site tracks which codes they use, how much they save, and now much they help others save.  It also awards users “badges” based on certain achievements.  For example, the “Bargain Hunter” badge is given to those who use over 10 coupons.

The site is currently offering a $5,000 prize for for the winner of a contest where you give RetailMeNot.com a wedding-style toast in a YouTube video.

While it’s hard to ascertain exactly how this website makes a profit, there are clues on one of their pages: “Category sponsorship – For only $200 a month you can sponsor any category (e.g. clothing) on RetailMeNot”

This seems to imply that RetailMeNot.com gets their income from retailers and producers.  As a shopper, there seems to be no downside to using their website.  It is free of annoying banner ads or popups and features lots of savings.  Get started today!

The staff at Twitter created a site “Hope For Haiti Now” in order to aggregate the Twitter community’s response to the crisis, and provide nonprofits raising money via Twitter with helpful tips for maximizing their distribution. 

Vanilla, a free forum tool, helps Haitian Families Reunite.  A Haitian expat in Florida used Vanilla to immediately set up a forum for posting information about missing relatives in the local language.  The story got to the news, thousands of people came to the site, and a few dozen families were reunited through the tool. 

For more information about technology and Haiti, wired Magazine has set up this social network with tons of blog posts and other information about who is getting involved and how.

Top 10 Social Entrepreneurial Websites for news, fellowships, funding, and training programs:

1. E-180

Keep you posted on social entrepreneurship, consensual education and social media. News, fellowships, training programs, resources.

 2. CSR Wire

CSRwire is the leading global source of Corporate Social Responsibility news.

 3. Change.org – Social entrepreneurship

The social entrepreneurship blog @ change.org. Nathaniel is the founding Director of the Center for Global Engagement at Northwestern University, which works annually with hundreds of students in dozens of countries around the world through curricular programs and student project incubation.

 4. Stanford Social Innovation Review

Strategies, tools and ideas for nonprofits, foundations and socially responsible businesses

 5. Fast Company – Social Responsibility

Fast Company often features articles on social responsibility and social entrepreneurship. They also organize every year the Social Capitalist Awards. Along with the 45 world-changing nonprofits, they also honor ten companies not only striving to make a profit, but to also make a difference

 6. Social edge

Social Edge is the global online community where social entrepreneurs and other practitioners of the social benefit sector connect to network, learn, inspire and share resources. A Skoll Foundation initiative.

 7. NextBillion.net

NextBillion.net brings together the community of business leaders, social entrepreneurs, NGOs, policy makers, and academics who want to explore the connection between development and enterprise.

 8. Alltop : Social entrepreneurship

The best of blogs on social entrepreneurship, from Guy Kawasaki’s Alltop.

 9. Alltop : Good

The best of blogs on social good, from Guy Kawasaki’s Alltop

 10. Ashoka

Ashoka is the global association of the world’s leading social entrepreneurs—men and women with system changing solutions for the world’s most urgent social problems. Since 1981, they have elected over 2,000 leading social entrepreneurs as Ashoka Fellows, providing them with living stipends, professional support, and access to a global network of peers in more than 60 countries.

…at SocialEdge.org.  It is a website where Social Entrepreneurs can share their thoughts and ideas online.  They publish 20 different blogs through their website, each on a different topic within Social Entrepreneurship.

I spent some time reading one such blog called “Kiva Chronicles” which features stories about Kiva.org, an online social micro-financing venture.  The blog usually has 2 to 4 entries per month, which are quite interesting.  Many of them share the personal stories of those helped by Kiva, with good detail and description.  There are also some fantastic pictures of these foreign entrepreneurs at work!

The Social Edge website also has a collection of videos, discussions, a wiki, and even job listings.  It seems to me that this website serves as a great hub for information about Social Entrepreneurship.